Breathe
by sticksbranchesroots
Summary: Leslie, a theater-loving victim of on and off depression, has seen it all, not knowing what life has in store for her next. Upon meeting the outcast of Paris, New York, the deformed and gentle Quasimodo, she begins to feel a tragically beautiful emotion known as love, and learns that life is not meant to be gone through without hardships, some more deadly than others. (Modern AU)
1. Midnight Memories

**The following story is a rewrite of my last HoND story, "On My Own". If you'd like to skip my introduction, I honestly don't blame you. Just scroll to the bottom.**

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><p><strong>SO HELLO MY SEXY PEOPLE.<strong>

**For the past few months I have either been managing my instagram account, roleplaying, tumbling down tumblr, working on various stories that will never get published, being at school, or being at play rehearsal. I've been anywhere but here.**

**I AM THE MINSTREL IN ONCE UPON A MATTRESS. I GET SOLOS AND THE FIRST APPEARANCE IN THE SHOW AND EVERYTHING. YAY.**

**Just a few weeks ago, I got the idea of rewriting On My Own, since it's the most successful story I've ever written on fanfiction and it really needs some major updating. I'm going to be reusing a bunch of the chapters, but I'm mostly just rewriting everything. This time, I aim to finish this story within the next two years or so. It's going to be very long, maybe fifty chapters or more.**

**CHANGES: I twisted the plot a bit, added more subplots and backstories, changed a few characters,**

**WARNING: I am not responsible for any heart attacks, breaking of objects, tears, pain, or death due to immense feels. Don't sue me, please. I don't have much money.**

**Please, don't be afraid to read and review! All reviewers will get shoutouts in the next chapter. I really want this to become as popular as On My Own was, if not more popular. Spread the word if you enjoyed it!**

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><p><strong>Chapter One: Midnight Memories<strong>

"Breathe."

The air was cold, deathly cold, and I could feel the tips of my fingers cracking against my bare arms, the edges of my hair beginning to split and turn to ice. My arms, long and toothpick-like, seemed like icicles, thin and frozen, and would snap if pressure were applied.

"Breathe," I spoke once more, my voice more stern and orderly, each individual letter crackling and snapping in its own twisted way, words dissolving into the gentle breeze that swept across the road. "_Breathe_, god damn it, _breathe_!"

The date was December thirty-first, and instead of staying out and celebrating the new year to come, I was leaning against a bakery and sobbing into my hands.

The night was dark, a thick sheet of black making it nearly impossible to make out any shape or form, no matter how big. The air was cold as ice, the tips of my fingers losing feeling, knuckles growing white and cracked and lips becoming chapped due to the freezing temperature. I probably looked like an idiot, sitting out there in just a tank top and skinny jeans, but I didn't care. The cold was the least of my worries in that moment.

I'd lost track of time hours ago, right when I finished my second or third beer. I remember thinking to myself, "Leslie, it's New Year's Eve. Fuck the clock." Obviously, I was a bit tipsy. Never before had I decided not to care about my curfew.

I was having trouble remembering how I'd got here, trying to piece together memories and connect them into a story. However, I always ended up stumbling into dark gaps, tripping over cracks of time in which I couldn't recall, for the life of me, where I had been and how I got to the setting of the next memory. _(Note to self- do not drink three beers in two hours)_

Here are the memories that I could uncover. Everything was fuzzy, images and sounds blurred and some pieces faintly gone over with an eraser, but the memories were there. I remembered pulling up to Harper's house, slamming the car door and reminding myself, for the millionth time, to call mom when I was about to head home, which would be around two a.m. In fact, the only thing that I could remember in a clear form was mom reminding me over and over and over again that I had to be home by two fifteen at the latest. I could hear her voice clearly, words echoing as I remembered pulling an unhealthily skinny arm through my coat sleeve. "If you're not home by then, there will be serious consequences, Leslie _Summer_," she reminded me, her voice sharp and serious, like a ruler tapping a desk, light but firm. "You don't want me to have another argument with your father."

I remember rolling my eyes, then saying something about how dad would argue with anyone over anything just to prove that each and every individual opinion that he has is right. I don't recall if mom said anything in reply- she probably didn't, or else I would have remembered it more clearly.

A few minutes later, I was slamming the door of my mother's maxima and making my way up the walkway of Harper Larson's house. It was fairly large, three floors including a basement, with a porch, a huge backyard, and a pool out back. If the party had been happening in the summer, his pool would have been filled to the edges with girls in bikinis and guys in long swim trunks, clinking champagne glasses and talking at the speed of wind. He and I would be the only ones in the hot tub, because he would have shooed everyone else away so that he and his girlfriend, yours truly, would be able to have some time alone. This consisted of light kissing, flirting, and relaxing together. Nothing more, although I could always tell by the hunger in his eyes that he wanted nothing but more. This occurred while all other partygoers and their dates made out underwater and laughed uncontrollably at every word that was said.

I fell for a party animal. I'm sorry, but I did. _(That was an apology to myself, by the way)_

There was a large period of time, about a few hours, I guessed, in which I simply sipped beers, hopped from room to room and socialized with some of Harper's friends. They're nice people, they really are- the problem is, I feel so out of place when I'm with them. There's something about Harper's friends that I just can't get past. Maybe it's their laid back, take-what-life-throws-at-you attitudes. I'm not sure.

I remembered wondering where Harper was, looking around the room constantly and trying to at least catch glimpses of him, to gaze upon his chestnut eyes and gold skin. I kept turning away from conversations to look around, constantly excusing myself to text him. Fifty two texts. No replies.

I tripped on another lost chunk of time, and made my way around another black hole in which the next puzzle piece had been sucked into. The next part of my string of memories consisted of me sitting in the living room by myself, leaning back on a plush sofa and sipping my third or fourth beer as I watched Miley Cyrus twerk her way through New Year's Rockin' Eve, wearing only a spandex bra and shorts. _How the hell isn't she freezing cold?_ I figured that somewhere, maybe at a local pub or at home playing pool, my dad was shaking his head and calling Miley a slut under his breath, maybe disguising his words as a rough cough or a sigh.

There was another lost chunk of time, maybe a half hour or so, in which I was too tipsy to even think. I wasn't drunk, I'd made sure of that- but I definitely was tipsy. My fingers were chilled from holding up cold bottles, my throat sour from chugging alcohol. My hearing was alright, and I knew that, but when I heard the shattering of glass and Harper's voice yelling, "_Fuck_!", I was sure that I was imagining things.

I was tense for a second, then rolled my eyes and proceeded to sip down the thin, wheat-flavored beer in my hand. My third or fourth one, maybe even my fifth. I'd lost count, and I honestly didn't care. That was something that I'd been doing often- not caring. I didn't care that I was sixteen years old and too young to be drinking legally. I didn't care that I was dating a wild party animal who barely had any time for me. I didn't care that I had a dad who was the most stereotypical representation of a white, republican father. I didn't care that I had barely any friends. And I certainly didn't care that I had absolutely no life.

How funny it was that, in that instant, I began to care. I began to care about all of those things, and it only took one sight to change my opinion on my life right then.

I turned my head to the side, starting to get up to get more ice for my beer, and my eyes caught sight of Harper, eyes full of surging energy, in just his boxers, half-leading, half-carrying a drunk and almost naked Gabrielle Kramer across the room, totally oblivious to the fact that I was sitting right there on the couch. The next image is the only one that isn't fuzzy and dream-like. This image was reality, cold and harsh and cruel. His hand had snaked underneath her purple thong, lips pressed firmly against hers and other hand supporting her spinning head. Gabrielle, one of the two Kramer twins, was undeniably hot, a temptation for all single boys in Notre Dame High- and some of the taken ones, too.

I never knew that her deep curves had been tempting my Harper.

I screamed, sharp and pitchy, allowing my beer bottle to slip out of my hand and shatter on the floor as I stood up. I could barely stand, toes vibrating and knees bobbing underneath me as Harper looked up with worried eyes, pushing Gabrielle away and walking up to me. He was wearing only his boxers, unzipped and gripping his waist loosely, chestnut colored eyes darting from his shorts to Gabrielle and then to me. Everything about this bastard just screamed "I just got laid" (trust me, when you're in high school, you know that look almost too well). I didn't speak, I didn't need to. Everything I felt was right there, electrified in the sweat-smelling air.

Most people don't understand what real agony is. Real agony is seeing the boy that you love go off and have sex with another girl- and not just any girl. A cheerleader. One of the sexiest girls in your school. Real agony is having the boy you love go behind your back and get pleasure from somewhere else. Real agony was what I was experiencing then.

I was able to croak out a few words, my throat slowly being blocked up by a hood of saliva. If my head wasn't pounding before, it sure was pounding now. My brain didn't know how to process this image, what to do with it or how to react. I'd been cheated on once before, in my sophomore year, but I only found out because of a friend of mine telling me. Because of what I had felt, I believed that there was no greater pain than finding out that your boyfriend had been cheating on you with some slut from the women's lacrosse team. Obviously, I was wrong. I hadn't considered what pain I'd be in if I had actually found my boyfriend cheating on me.

_"How long!?"_ The words were loud, elongated, slurred. I was beginning to question whether or not I was actually drunk. I don't really know the difference between that and tipsy.

It took Harper a few seconds to respond, his eyes widening and his jaw moving, lips pressing against each other and then opening again, no sound coming out. Finally, he sighed, shaking his head and staring at me as if I were a child whom had disappointed him. "Four months."

Four months. That's exactly how long that we had been dating. Four lengthy, warm months. So, basically, my entire fifth relationship was a total lie. Thank you, Harper Larson. _Fuck you._

The next memory was absolutely frightening. It consisted of patches of color, blurred and mish-mashed together into something with no shape or form, and complete static in the background, like an illusion from a dream. There were traces of voices woven into the static, Harper's, mine, and Gabrielle's, speaking strange words that I couldn't decipher. It hurt my head to even begin to recall anything related to that moment.

The final memory consisted of me running out of the house, my face stinging and burning like hell, the cold engulfing me like a slap to the face- which, I can only assume, is what had happened to me inside. I didn't take my car, I didn't think to get in and drive home. All I could remember thinking was telling myself to run.

And there I was, leaning against Penelope's Bakery, home of Paris, New York's state-famous pumpkin bread. The tears were slowing now, a steady stream followed by a series of whimpers rather than Niagara-fucking-Falls and loud, obnoxious animal noises.

I had no idea what time it was, the clocks lining main street blurred by the darkness and washed out by the tears in my eyes. I couldn't tell if I had been out past my curfew, I didn't have any clue if the clock had struck midnight yet. Was it 2014 or 2015? I wanted to know, but standing up and taking my phone out of the pocket of my skinny jeans required effort that I clearly didn't have. I felt like I'd been stripped of all motivation and inspiration to move, or breathe, or say or do anything. I felt dead, like a person who had had their heart ripped right out of their chest. Why live if you have no reason to live? Why breathe if your reason to breathe is off having sex with a cheerleading slut? Over the course of four months, Harper had become my sunshine, my happiness, my reason to live. And now? Now, that was all gone, thanks to the vagina and sex appeal of one of the Kramer twins.

Life would be a hell of a lot better if God had just decided to remove sex altogether and replace it with another, less intimate way to have children- a way that tempted a lot less people.

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><p>My breaths came out in short gasps, my blonde hair coming out of my head in thick waves and covering my face. There was hair attached to my lips, stuck on by my lip gloss and dried there by my tears. The soles of my sneakers were worn down and ripped, and I was shivering, my tiny, unhealthily thin figure trembling under the blanket of cold air. Every time my torso moved, even moving the slightest inch, I felt something deep in my chest ripping, heard the sounds of fabric being torn. If hell was unbearably cold instead of unbearably hot, this was what it would be like. I was in hell.<p>

I never knew what real pain was. Not until that moment. Not until Harper showed me what it feels like to have your heart ripped apart.

The blood in my ear began to pound strangely, as if it were a radio picking up a bad signal. A muffled sound rang out, like a scream underwater, like someone speaking with several walls in front of them. I didn't bother to pick my head up. No motivation, remember? I continued crying, the stream of tears leaving my eyes without any sign of stopping, my mouth spitting out those whimpers and groans. I was in pain, and it was obvious- maybe a little too obvious.

I felt something, a tap on the shoulder, light and short, asking for attention. It was so unexpected, so strangely new, and I suddenly felt as if I wasn't alone. I felt my stomach tighten itself even more, causing pain to spread throughout my lower body, pinching every nerve in my abdomen. I groaned, finally moving and pressing a hand to my belly, using my free hand to clean out my ear. Sure enough, my ears were bleeding, as was my nose, a bit. What the hell happened in Harper's house that caused me to start bleeding out of any hole in my face? It seemed completely unnatural.

My thoughts were immediately stopped when a voice, low and rough, sounded. "Are you alright, miss?" Male. It would have been a comforting voice if it wasn't the middle of the night, if I wasn't sobbing on a dark street, and especially if I hadn't just gone through a traumatizing breakup.

Without thinking, I curled myself up into a smaller ball, my tiny hand covering my eyes. I didn't want to face another man, especially not in the middle of the night. "G-g-go away," I slurred, the words barely making it out of my mouth, escaping through the thin cracks in my teeth. I gulped, letting the wall of mucus in my throat recede. "Please. Now."

There was nothing. No shuffling of feet, no "goodbye", no sign that whoever this man was had left me alone. This was when I actually began to get scared, pulling my hair out of my face and letting my head lean back against the cement walls of the bakery. It took a lot for me to open my eyes, and even more for me to wipe the tears out of them. I had no motivation whatsoever, but I did it. Now, even the tiniest of things seemed to have no point in doing.

Standing above me was a man, about six feet tall, his figure clouded over by the thickening darkness. I could make out white sneakers and black jeans, but nothing more. The leftover tears in my eyes were still making the colors around me seem blurred and washed away, the darkness making it impossible to see anything.

I gulped again, letting another layer of mucus go down. "I don't have any m-m-money-"

"You think I'm asking for money?" His voice was curious, soft, a bit gentle, but to me, it was just annoying. I was afraid and bothered by his presence in more ways than I could possibly count, tiny figure trembling and heart pounding. What could this man possibly be doing here, in the middle of the night, having come up to a sobbing, aching girl?

There was silence for a few moments, nothing but the sound of blood pounding in my ears, and then he spoke again, this time sounding more determined and brave. "When a man sees a pretty little girl sitting out in the cold and sobbing, he stops his car and asks her if she's alright."

What the fuck? My brows furrowed and I looked up at him with an expression that said "you're too stupid to insult". That was honestly the cheesiest line I've ever heard. Did this guy come out in the middle of the night to flirt with me or to rape me? I don't know if he noticed, but this was no bar. I could hear my blood starting to boil and steam in my chest, my heart picking up speed again.

"I," I spat, "am not pretty." My nearly anorexic figure and the red acne scars all over my face couldn't possibly be anywhere near attractive. I wasn't even close to being pretty, and if I was, I wouldn't have been cheated on.

He sighed, and somewhere hidden under that sigh was a laugh. "Is putting yourself down the new thing that girls do to get the attention of men?"

I felt my saliva start boiling in my throat. Is bothering girls who just had their heart broken the new thing that men do to get girls pissed off? I wanted to spit in his face so badly. "Who said that I was trying to get your attention?"

"Touché."

I was about to scream. "Fuck off."

The man chuckled, as if he were taunting me, trying to test my patience to see how far I could go without snapping. "Feisty little one, aren't you?" My face burned of annoyance. Some part of me kept wanting to run as fast as possible and get home, another part told me to stay and put this idiot in his place. "Don't worry," he continued, "I'm not going anywhere."

Let's just analyze the situation for a second, because if you don't understand how frightened I was, then we need to reevaluate what's going on for just a moment- I'm a sixteen year old girl, a junior in high school, unhealthily skinny, blonde, and sobbing while leaned up against a bakery in the middle of the night. Obviously, when I thought to throw myself onto a sidewalk and sob until I had nothing left inside me, I was not thinking the situation through (heartbroken people usually don't think things through that well). And then, after an hour or two or three or however the hell long I was out there crying, a man, probably a bit older than I am, sees me, gets out of his car, and starts talking to me. And he wasn't saying anything remotely comforting! All he had succeeded in doing was making my blood boil strangely, setting off a weird flame in my chest. I wasn't angry, but I wasn't calm, either. It was more like being terribly annoyed.

He sat down, stretching out his legs and making himself comfortable next to me. Oh, fuck, no. He's not leaving any time soon, is he? Fuck. At this angle, just a few inches away, I could make out his facial features. He couldn't have been older than nineteen or twenty, with long, blonde hair that had been cut so that it extended halfway down his neck, a patch of deep, golden hair covering his chin. His face was well defined, nose a bit on the large side and eyes dark, the color of the night. He was stocky, but that was from pure muscle and not a single bit of fat. He dressed very simply, a white sweatshirt, black jeans, and white sneakers, but that didn't take away from the fact that he was attractive. Yes, I said it. The guy who had come up to me as I sobbed and was either trying to flirt with me or rape me was sexy. Unbelievably hot, and I'm not exaggerating anything, either. However, I didn't let that change my opinion on him for a moment. I don't develop opinions on people simply based on looks, which is probably why I'd been dating the dorky, less popular guys for the past few years (until I met Harper, which exposed me to a totally different world and allowed me to step out of my comfort zone. And how had that turned out?)

My brows furrowed, and I shot him a look that was supposed to be intimidating but probably just looked like an opportunity for a challenge. "If you're here to rape me, I'm warning you, I took tae kwon do for three years-"

"And why the hell would I do that?" he asked, his voice immediately becoming curiously strict, giving me a look that made it seem as though what I'd said was insane and impossible. He cleared his throat, sitting up straighter and pushing his chest out. "I consider myself a man of honor, miss." I blinked. Is he high? "I would never damage that honor by hurting someone."

I rolled my eyes. "You're drunk."

"Maybe." He shrugged, and it was then that I could smell the faint aroma of alcohol in the air. Or maybe that was just me. After all, you can't drink three to five beers without the smell of alcohol lingering on your breath.

I clucked my tongue, crossing my arms and starting to unravel my body, arms opening up a bit and my legs crossing on the concrete. "If you're a man of honor, you wouldn't damage that honor by getting drunk." I raised an eyebrow.

He smacked his lips and gave me a strange glance. "It's New Year's Eve. Let me live a little, will you?"

"So you _are_ drunk."

He shrugged. "I had a couple beers before getting over here." He spoke the word 'couple' as if it were nothing, as if it were something that anyone could accomplish and get through.

My eyes widened, and the knot in my stomach, having untangled itself, was beginning to tangle again. "Men of honor don't drink and drive." This man, whoever he was, was giving me mixed emotions. One second, he's claiming that he's a "man of honor" (whatever that means) and must help a damsel in distress, the next, he's confessing to drinking and driving as if it were nothing.

He shook his head again, chuckling a bit and looking at me like I was a scullery peasant and he was the king, wealthy and powerful. Now's a good time to call the police, Leslie. "Men of honor don't get caught. I never said anything about not drinking and driving."

"You're drunk as fuck."

"I got over here without damaging anyone or anything, didn't I?" He cleared his throat, more of that alcohol-ish smell filling the air around us. "We were never properly introduced, were we?" If he wasn't an idiot five seconds ago, he certainly was an idiot now. You don't "properly introduce" yourself to a girl who you found sobbing in the middle of the street and then proceeded to confess your drinking and driving to. My hand began to slide down my back and into the back pocket of my jeans, reaching for my phone. It may have been an exaggeration, but I was ready to call the cops on his ass.

He leaned towards me a bit, extending his hand. "The name's Phoebus. Phoebus Chandler." I felt my heart stop for a second or two. Oh, fuck. I knew the name Phoebus Chandler. Co-captain of the football team and boyfriend of Danielle Kramer, Gabrielle's twin. Hall monitor, and right-hand man to Vice Principal Frollo. Because of the latter, I'd feared him, stepped back whenever I saw him patrolling the halls of Notre Dame High, dressed in blue and gold, the school colors, looking out upon crowds of students as if they were below him- because they were. I'd always thought of him as a, well, a man of honor (although I hate admitting it), only gazing upon him from afar, wondering how the hell he got up to such a high status in two and a half years.

A smile pulled at the edges of his lips. "And you are?"

I just stared at his palm, straight, formal, almost glowing. He may have been feared by most of the student population, but damn, this guy was a fucking idiot. "You found me crying my eyes out in front of a bakery. Do you _think _that I'm going to tell you my name?" He was literally too stupid to insult. I couldn't think of the right words to say, because there weren't any. What do you say to a boy who you've feared for two and a half years, only to find out that he's a moron?

"There are worse things to be caught doing." At least that sentence was true, somewhat relatable. "You're in my chemistry class, aren't you?" _Well, I'm fucked._ "Lily? Lizzie? Lorrie-?"

"Leslie." I gulped, letting my words out. "Leslie Summer."

"Ah, yes, that's it." He tapped his fingers to his hair-covered chin, eyes examining my figure, as if determining if I was suitable of speaking to him. I looked down at myself as well. My skinny jeans had ripped, revealing a patch of pale skin on my thigh, my sneakers practically falling apart on my shoes. But it wasn't my clothes that I was concerned about- it was my figure. I'm skinny, obviously, but a bit too skinny, to the point where it's pretty much disgusting. I have zero curves whatsoever, a flat ass and boobs that are slightly smaller than average. I'm a rectangle, so thin that I would disappear if I turned sideways, and there is nothing I can do about it. Eating just gets me taller, and I'm plenty tall already- almost six feet. My dad says that being tall is a good thing, because you get noticed a lot easier, but I beg to differ. I just look like an overgrown weed most of the time.

The next thing that came out of Phoebus' mouth shocked me a bit. "Harper's girlfriend, right?"

I didn't want to respond. "Not anymore." My words were small now, soft and pushed down, as if I were speaking underwater. "At least, I don't think I am." A part of me was convinced that Harper would come to my house tomorrow morning, holding a bouquet of flowers, dropping to his knees and begging for my forgiveness while confessing undying love to me. At least, that's how it always happens in the movies. Books are a bit more realistic, but the movies show perfect fantasies of sixteen year old girls, like Dear John and The Notebook.

Phoebus smacked his lips, gaze turning to the empty road, barren and desolate. "Ah, _well_, we all knew that it wouldn't last. The asshole's been cheating on girls since the eighth grade."

A warm stinging feeling erupted in my chest, clawing at my heartstrings and threatening to eat away at my happiness. Tears formed in my eyes and clung to my eyelashes, building up before they could spill. Just like that, I was on the verge of another sobbing session. I should have known that Phoebus was going to bring back those dark feelings. Being a person of his high rank, he knew everything that there is to know about everyone (and yet, he couldn't even remember my name. How special am I?), and share an embarrassing piece of gossip about a person in an instant. No wonder the head cheerleader had him wrapped around her finger- she needed him for her personal revenges, all piled up and ready to be executed.

And again, reality had come to smack me back in the face. Harper Larson, the one boy who I thought I could really trust, who I devoted four long, warm and fuzzy months to, who I thought that I could possibly spend the rest of my life with- no. Nothing of that would ever happen. He would never want to spend the rest of his life with me, and he never did- he'd been cheating on me and going behind my back for his own personal pleasure, not taking any bit of my feelings into consideration. He was a liar and a cheater, but I didn't hate him. I couldn't hate him. There was always that cliché possibility that he would come running back to me and plead for forgiveness, and even if something like that was impossible, I still cared for him. I couldn't wish hate on him, I couldn't think of him in a negative way, because that would mean hurting myself and convincing myself that the boy I'd devoted four months to was irrelevant to me.

Phoebus obviously saw some of that pain in my eyes, because just as quickly as I'd begun feeling it, he was there, patting my broad shoulder in a rather drunken-like fashion. "There, there, Leslie."

"You're not helping."

Phoebus sighed, removing his hand from my shoulder and running it through his blonde locks of hair. I have to admit, that was sexy. It's strange, really, how some of the smallest things that men do can be attractive, especially things they do on a regular basis without even thinking about. "Listen, Leslie," he spoke, looking from me to the road and then back to me. "I'm headed up to a party. Monica DeGiorno's house. I think that every brokenhearted girl needs a party to get a man out of their system." He stuck his chest out, tapping the back of his head as if the answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything, was stored in there (well, we all know that the answer is 42, which, by the way, happens to be my birthday, April second, 4-2).

I shot him a glare, my anger having calmed down and receded. "And what makes you the love expert?"

"I've been friends with the entire cheer squad since eighth grade," he replied, stating the fact in a boring, emotionless tone of voice. "I know what girls do when they're upset." I wanted to remind him that cheerleaders partied on absolutely any possible occasion, hitting clubs every weekend and hooking up with the hottest looking guy in the room (no offense to cheerleaders, though). It wasn't just what they did when they were heartbroken- wait, do cheerleaders even get heartbroken? Aren't they emotionless? (Again, I take no credit for offending any cheerleaders out there). Phoebus gave me a stare, one that was slightly comforting, finally, and said, 'I want to help you if you'd let me. "Anyway, I could take you to the party, if you want."

I furrowed my brows, looking at the jock questionably. "Why would you offer to take me?"

"I just told you-"

"Besides that. You barely know me."

He smiled. God, even his smile was sexy. "Well, I've started to take a liking to you." He then shook his head, as if to take back his words. "Not romantically, though. No, I already have a girlfriend. But in a friendly kind of liking."

All I'd done was cursed at this idiot, and he was saying that he was starting to like me? I honestly had no clue how to react. Was he drunk or did he always act this idiotic?

I bit my lip. "I'm not sure." A party did seem tempting, but if I got to a new one now, there would be no way in hell that I was making it home by two. Also, I hadn't been having a very good experience with parties that night. "I got my heart broken at the last party I went to." Something in my head started to panic. "Plus, I have to be back home by two-"

Phoebus chuckled and shook his head. "Excuses, _excuses_." Nudging me in the arm, he added, "Don't you want to start your new year off with a little fun?"

Fun. To me, fun was curling up under my heated blanket with a good book. Fun was leaning a head against my wall and racking my brain for ideas for my next poem. Fun was texting a boyfriend that I no longer had. Fun was attending rehearsals for the school musical and singing my heart out on an empty stage. I didn't know what the typical teenage kind of fun was like- until Harper had dragged me into that world. With him, everything sounded like the clinking of beer bottles and smelled like a pool full of sweaty girls in bikinis. With him, everything was rushed, blurred, sudden.

But did I really want to go back into my shell that Harper had pulled me out of? Did I really want to go back to being the girl who had stayed away from crowds and had never made real friends before?

Somewhere, a clock chimed- midnight. And just like that, another year had begun.

"What the hell." I held out my hand, tiny, lengthy fingers growing blue from the icy air. "Show me a good time."

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><p>This chapter was supposed to be longer, but then I took an arrow to the knee.<p>

THAT'S RIGHT.

IT'S 2014 AND I JUST MADE AN ARROW TO THE KNEE JOKE. HA.

Anyway, please review! Don't worry, the next chapter will have more content. I think I did a pretty good job with this, although I see a few things that I have to work on... What do you think?

Next chapter will be up by next week, hopefully :)

~Leslie


	2. Strangers in Masks

**Okay, I am actually on somewhat of a schedule- my goal is to post one chapter per week. So, according to that sad excuse for a schedule, this chapter was originally supposed to be put up an entire week ago but everything changed when the fire nation attacked. **

**Okay, this chapter is about 20-30% longer than chapter one (I am taking a wild guess with this), and it took me literally FOREVER TO WRITE BECAUSE I KEPT GETTING DISTRACTED BECAUSE TUMBLR AND INSTAGRAM AND SCHOOL AND PLAY REHEARSAL AND NYAH.**

**Anyway, here I am! First off, I'd like to thank our beautiful reviewers:**

**Nicky0**

**TheBeautifulDreamer**

**DontEvenLookatMe**

**ANYTHINGGOES31**

**And Her Royal Majesty, Queen ****Lady of Myth and Legends**

**Snow day today, which means that I have a lot more time to work on the story. These chapters take me a long time to write, four to six hours if I do it in one day without breaks. I try to put in as much detail as possible and make it as good as I can.**

**My horoscope app today told me that I have taken on a certain task that I am well-prepared for, but in order to get it done to the best of my ability, I have to ask for help and advice. It will make myself come off as a person who is dedicated and wants to improve in the best way possible. I flipped out and almost threw my phone on the ground (OH MY GOD IT'S POSSESSED).**

**Enjoy chappie two.**

**A/N: I read this over after posting it and found several errors that I've fixed. I also cut out some of my long tangents to make this chapter shorter, or at least a little shorter. Enjoy :3**

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><p><strong>Chapter Two: Strangers in Masks<strong>

Monica DeGiorno is the co-head cheerleader of Notre Dame High School's cheerleading squad, had won the title of Candy Cane Princess at the Winter Social (which was a big deal, considering that she was the only junior that had been nominated), and is a "seasonal full-time" model, found on the covers of Vogue, Seventeen, and Marie Claire magazines, wearing nothing but tiny bikinis and the latest fashions, most of which with a ten to one skin to clothing ratio. She strutted around Notre Dame High with gold jewelry dripping from her ears and neck, as if she had been bathed in a pool of pure gold. She was rich as hell- her mother is the co-editor of Vogue, her father a fashion designer, and a really good one, too.

So, of course, when Phoebus pulled up to her house, I was not surprised at what I found sitting behind the gate- a fucking mansion. A marble walkway, brick walls, a porch that wrapped around the whole house, with at least three or four stories. You don't find houses like this very often in Paris, New York. Most of the houses here are small, just one or two floors, very few including a basement- however, on the outskirts of the large town, you could find elaborate houses, custom designed by the wealthy, perfect for parties, sleepovers, and festivals. So, of course, Monica would always jump at the chance to host parties and increase her popularity, wanting to give her peers the time of their lives while giving herself the chance to meet a sexy senior from Bloomingdale or Hartford or some other local town.

"You ever been here before?" he asked casually, trying to make conversation as we got out of the car. Surprisingly, there weren't that many cars here, which made it easier for us to park close to the house. I guessed that a bunch of people carpooled or something, I don't know.

"Nope," I replied, avoiding his gaze as he shut the doors of his car and walked through the opened gates of the DeGiorno property. "My first time." Thank God that he was trying to make some conversation. The entire way over here, the only thing he had asked me was if I needed a tissue, to which I responded no, carelessly wiping my nose on my bare arm.

He looked at me, dark eyes meeting my blue-green ones. "So I guess that you aren't so much of a party person." This was his second sentence, and it was already horribly awkward.

I shrugged. "I'm really not," I replied. "Not until Harper started making me come to his parties." Even speaking his name hurt me, made my chest pang a bit. What was he doing now? Was he making out with Gabrielle? Chugging beers with his friends? Or was he calling me, desperately trying to explain what had happened, wanting to mend our relationship and get back together with me? I sincerely hoped that it was the latter, imagined him finally being able to reach me and sobbing over the phone, telling me how badly he fucked up and how much he loves me.

I heard Phoebus mutter something along the lines of "Of _course_," and then clear his throat as we began to walk up the steps of the DeGiorno mansion. I listened to the sound of my sneakers clicking against the marble porch. All I could hear were the sounds of cash registers clicking. _Chu-ching! Chu-ching!_ This thing must have cost a fortune to install, a fortune that Mr. and Mrs. DeGiorno obviously had.

"Monica's parties are sort of like Harper's parties 2.0," Phoebus explained, leaning his arm against the side of the front door. Even from outside, I could hear the high pitched screaming and violent laughter coming from inside Monica's house. It was loud, too, much louder than anything I'd heard at Harper's parties. "More people, more dancing, and especially more alcohol." Oh, shit. If I wasn't already tipsy enough, there was more alcohol there to tempt me. I could picture a table covered in exotic liquors and beers, painted in flamboyant colors, powerful enough to knock you out with just a few sips. I reminded myself that I'd had enough alcohol for one night and I needed to avoid that temptation, although it wasn't going to be easy.

"Okay," I replied, crossing my arms loosely, giving him a weird glare.

And with that, Phoebus pushed against the door, and it opened, as if it had a mind of its own and were opening just for him.

The smell of liquor and dense sweat clogged my nostrils, making it almost impossible for me to breathe, and because of the smell, I was tempted to step back and ask Phoebus to take me home. However, he looked like he wanted to get inside and get something done, so I proceeded into the house as he practically pushed me in, shutting the door behind us.

The first room that we'd entered was an entryway, a room with a terribly high ceiling lit by an elaborate chandelier, something that I'd see out of the Victorian-age. It somewhat reminded me of the infamous chandelier from "The Phantom of the Opera", pieces of metal and iron that dripped with exquisite diamonds and had been painted a lavish shade of gold, a cluster of lights hidden inside of its core. The walls, however, didn't match the chandelier at all- they were painted a shade of light green, the color of the core of a lime, fresh and juicy, sour and somewhat revolting, yet perfect when wedged into a margarita glass or a beer bottle- which, I can only assume, is why the DeGiornos had this room painted this way. White doors stood at every corner of the tiny room, each one the same as the other, like an illusion, something that was terribly creepy to me. It was like someone had put in one door and used the "copy and paste" feature on photoshop to install the others. This made the room seem smaller and a lot more cramped, making me question whether or not I was really claustrophobic. Even in this room, which looked like it was nowhere near the room in which the party was taking place, I could hear the steady beat of the music, sounding like it was underwater and drowning, the floor underneath me vibrating, pulsing with energy, the doors shaking with the strength of the music and electrified energy in the air.

However, I didn't have much time to observe this front entryway, a very small part of an extremely elaborate house. Phoebus gave me another push, light yet terribly urgent, towards the door to my right. I rolled my eyes, leaning back to swat his arms away as I grasped the golden handle, thin and easily able to fit around my fingers, long and lanky, like pale string beans. I pulled at the door and it opened, swinging at the hinges and revealing a plain, wooden staircase, like a home project that had been started but had never been finished, a household task that the wife had been constantly nagging the husband to do. The music had grown stronger, the air smelling more of liquor and pure sweatiness, (I could make out the scent of vomit hidden underneath all the layers of the aroma), and this time, I was able to go down without being pushed or shoved by Phoebus, listening as the sound of screaming and pulsing music grew stronger yet. It was like I was so close, like the DJ was playing right in my ear. I felt the sounds in the back of my brain, beating inside my skull and making every inch of hair on my skin stand up. I felt colder, suddenly, although the room was very warm, the pulsing sound running down my bones and electrifying every instinct.

I reached the bottom of the staircase, Phoebus just a stair or two behind, turned a corner, and immediately thought about going back up the stairs. The room was large, probably as big as the high school auditorium, which was gigantic as it was, a maximum occupancy of two thousand people, not including a stage large enough to fit a dancing cast of fifty-five. The entire room was dark, shadows overlapping and enveloping the room in a black glow, the only source of light being the multicolored lights that hung at the high ceilings. My skin turned a dull red after I stepped under the first light, the shadows at the edges of my skin like black, mystifying ghosts, taunting the red color that illuminated me. The walls looked as if they were made of pure concrete, locking in cool air and absorbing all the dull colors that emitted from the lights. Tables full of miscellaneous bottles and glass jugs lined the room, each one, sure enough, filled with multicolored alcoholic beverages. A vile taste rose up in my throat as I scanned the bottles across the room- scotch, vodka, beer, wine, a few margarita stands- I wanted to vomit, due to the fact that A, a mansion full of sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen year olds shouldn't have alcohol anywhere near it, and B, I'd already stuffed myself with enough liquor to last me the year. I was good, but knowing me, and knowing the emotional state that I was currently in, I would probably be drowning a shot or two by the time I left.

The room was full of people, hundreds of them, dancing strangely in the middle of the large room or leaning against the walls, socializing over a glass of whatever liquor they'd chosen to have. The room reeked of their sweat, sounded of their laughter and the clinking of their glasses, was filled with their bodies and their dancing. I immediately felt out of place, like I was a stranger to all these partygoers, like I was the only person with a bare face in a room full of people wearing elaborate masks. It was such a cold feeling, being a stranger, especially among those who mingled with the Monica DeGiorno, the popular crowd, and I started to question why I had let Phoebus pull me up off the icy concrete and bring me to this place. It was dark, unbearably hot, and stank terribly, and the first thing I could think of was wanting to be in Harper's arms, to have him shield and protect me. My subconscious hadn't quite processed the fact that Harper had just cheated on me.

There was a stage at the end of the room, the only part of the area which was normally lit, the strobe and multicolored lights straying far away from it. It reminded me of the stage that took up most of Notre Dame High's auditorium- deep red curtains that hung on either side, their smooth ends barely touching the ground; dusty wood that made up the main platform, pieces of duct tape and flecks of paint from previous workings here and there; black curtains that shielded the small backstage area from the main stage. The only difference was the backdrop- it was the same concrete that made up the rest of the walls in the room. At Notre Dame High, our backdrop is made of tightly packed bricks, painted over each year, become the main backdrop for whatever musical was being put on that year.

The music, fast rap with a quick, pulsing beat that shook the entire room, seemed to surround me and walk up my bare arms, like the music itself was a person who was holding me at the waist, nibbling at my jaw line, and rubbing my thigh in a strange yet terribly rough way, sending shockwaves throughout my whole body. The music was here, and the music was alive, making each glass in the room shake and vibrate against the tables, putting everyone under a sort of spell, injecting a sort of drug in them that put them in that "party" mood. I assumed that that's how twerking had been created. It was all due to the power of the bass-thumping party music.

I turned around to face Phoebus, who was standing on his tip-toes and glaring over my long, tall figure. "This is _it_?" I had to raise my voice and strain my vocal cords for him to hear me. Music doesn't like to be interrupted, so it makes itself as loud as it can and leaves the partygoers to the task of communicating in their loudest voices.

His eyes traveled to meet mine, and he raised an eyebrow. "You mean you aren't satisfied with the venue?"

I shook my head, my skin crawling as I tried my hardest to focus on my reply instead of the excruciatingly loud music and the dense smell of sweat. "I am, I really am, it's just…" I took a few glances to either side of me, partygoers clinking champagne glasses and laughing heartily while talking at the heights of their voices. This is what normal teenagers did on New Year's Eve. They got drunk and let pounding music manipulate their every move. It was frightening.

I turned back to Phoebus. "It's sort of overwhelming."

He shrugged, his broad, thick shoulders extending. "Well, you were the one who agreed to come here." His eye caught a redhead in a pink cocktail dress, who winked at him and waved, her hand snaking under her bra as he winked back. "Have some fun while you can."

"_Excuse_ me?" I raised an eyebrow, starting to step away, making the gap between us larger than it already was. "_You're_ the one who dragged me here."

"_Dragged_ you here?" Phoebus began to chuckle, throwing his head back, laughter intertwining with the indecipherable rap that pounded in my ears. He cleared his throat, standing up straighter like a palace guard, becoming all business again. "If I'm not _mistaken_, miss Summer, my suggesting that you come here was an _option_, not an order."

I clucked my tongue. Damn. It was going to be hard to create a comeback for that one. "_Well_," I began to say, formulating the answer as I went, hoping for something witty to come out of my mouth, "if you hadn't stopped your car to come pick me up off the side of the street, none of this would have happened."

This time, it was his turn to raise an eyebrow in a shocked manner. "Oh, so trying to help a damsel in distress is a _crime_, then?" Phoebus challenged, causing a pang to grow in my chest, fire red and burning with anger. Damsel in distress. This moron _literally_ just fucking called me a damsel in distress, a label attached to selfish females who weren't strong enough to get themselves out of tough situations, cliché little girls who needed men to rescue them from danger, to do every little thing for them and treat them like trophies instead of actual human beings.

I swallowed a fire-hot mouthful of saliva, my brows furrowing in anger. It doesn't take much to get me annoyed, and this idiot was really pushing it. "I am _not_ a fucking damsel in-"

"Phoebus Chandler! _Darling_!" a bubbly voice shouted over the pulse of the music, overly excited and a bit turned on (going to public high school can teach you how to tell if a girl is sexually aroused just by listening to their voice. It's a better lesson than world history could ever teach me- at least it's something that I'm going to have to use in life).

I turned my head and caught sight of a dark haired, curvy girl, a few inches shorter than me, I guessed, stumbling towards Phoebus, tripping over her own toes. She leaned herself against the golden haired boy's tall and muscular figure, resting her thin fingers on his shoulder and rubbing her tiny nose against his bare arm. Her hair was done up in a French braid, clean and silky, bubblegum colored jewels dripping from her skinny neck. She wore a hot pink cocktail dress, her gigantic breasts pouring out of the top and jiggling with every step that she took, ass so big that I thought that the fabric was going to rip any second. She wasn't wearing any shoes, walking around the hot, sweaty room with bare feet, red and blistery from dancing. This girl was obviously a cheerleader, her expensive taste in clothing and jewelry coming together with her huge ass and humongous boobs; perfect, silky hair and dark eyes creating the mysterious aura about her that most cheerleaders at Notre Dame High had.

She began to rub the back of Phoebus's neck tenderly, as if massaging him to get him to relax. "I was beginning to think that you wouldn't _show_." Her voice was dripping with regality, but at the same time, she was pulling off the sticking-her-bottom-lip-out-and-pouting-in-a-sexy-way kind of thing, trying to act like a young child who didn't get the toy that she wanted. And that's exactly what men were to cheerleaders- toys. Nothing but props in a drama. "Who's the blonde?" I felt something freeze at the bottom of my stomach. So she had seen me. I felt so humbled by this girl, so out of place wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, while she was dressed up like a genuine, twenty-first century princess.

Phoebus cleared his throat, expression not changing since the girl had begun to approach him. "Monica, this is Leslie Summer. Leslie, well, you know Monica." My feet became cement, and my heart turned to ice and dropped to my stomach. It was hard to make out that trademark blue eyeshadow and silky, midnight black hair through the darkness of the room and the dull multicolored lights (everyone's hair looked black in this terrible lighting), but it was her, the tormenter of hundreds, queen bee of the school, co-head-cheerleader, a girl born into luxury and a girl who would die in luxury. A girl who had everything handed to her on a silver platter, who treated life like a game that she had been playing for the past seventeen years, who treated boys like toys and sets in the musical that was her life. That was Monica DeGiorno in a nutshell, and here she was.

Monica, however, didn't take our meeting as seriously. "Ah, _yes_, Milligan's ex." Her words were completely emotionless, dull, empty and lifeless. I immediately felt my heart becoming frozen, a familiar icy feeling rising up in my chest, colored purple, a choppy mixture of both blue sadness and red anger. The more ex-boyfriends you have, the more you experience that feeling.

The cheerleader seemed to brush me to the side, waving her hand as if to dismiss me, like a princess dismissing a servant. She turned back to Phoebus, something in her dark eyes starting to melt as she stood up on her tip toes and wrapped a thin arm around the golden-haired boy's waist, starting to nibble at the corner of his chin and plant warm kisses across his jaw line. I raised another eyebrow at her frisky nature, watching as she basically ate the bottom of Phoebus's face. "Well, come _on_, hunky," she flirted softly, tugging at his skin with her teeth. "We have a _lot_ to discuss." Danielle Kramer just lets Monica throw herself on top of her boyfriend like that? I shook my head, rolling my eyes as I began to assume that the wealthy didn't mind sharing their men- after all, each man was one out of hundreds that they'd spend time with.

Phoebus nodded, not flinching in his firm stance the slightest, unaffected my Monica's chewing on his face. Obviously, he'd had experience with attractive cheerleaders. "Of course, Monica, of _course_." It was as if he were a servant, heeding to his mistress's every command, a butler to the owner of a mansion. Maybe they did have that kind of relationship. Phoebus turned to me, his expression still not changing, letting his thick hand intertwine with Monica's tiny one. "Go mingle for awhile, Leslie. I have _business_ to attend to." And with that, the pair was gone, having disappeared and faded into the roaring sea of strangers with masks.

And once again, I was alone, and it wasn't any different than when I had been out crying on a sidewalk. Yes, I was in a crowd of people, but being ignored and deemed invisible in a cluster of such high-class social butterflies was the same thing as being alone on an icy cold night. People did see me, glancing at me every now and then as they passed by to talk to a friend, but I wasn't worth talking to- I wasn't even worth complimenting (not that there was much about me that could be complimented), or even saying a hello to. I wasn't worth the attention of such high-class students, being the middle-class, basically-anorexic and almost six foot tall girl that I am. I couldn't fit in with these people, even if I piled on makeup and made out with every boy I could get my hands on. Even if I put on a mask, just like each one of them, there would still be vast oceans and wide continents in between our similarities. I could act like them, attempt to fit in with them, but I would never be them.

I'm not saying that I was a social outcast, and I'm not saying that I was worth ignoring- I'm saying that nobody knew me, and as such, they deemed me unimportant and not worth wasting any time on. A room full of strangers in masks can seem as frightening as a room full of axe-murderers in masks- which, I assumed, at least one or two of these people actually were.

A cold, uneasy feeling grew up at the tip of my stomach, spreading to my chest and then up to my neck, making it nearly impossible to breathe, the sweaty and humid air not helping one bit. I wanted to leave. I wanted to walk right out of the DeGiorno mansion and get in my car and drive home and sleep. I wanted to forget that this night had ever happened, erase it from my memory completely. However, I knew that that was impossible. I was only here as long as Phoebus was here, since he was my ride and the _"knight in shining armor"_ (gag me) who had rescued me from the clutches of the cold night (seriously, I wanted to push that idiot down a well, preferably a dark, cold one with no way of escape, also known as the gateway to _hell_), and as long as he stayed, I stayed. There was no way in hell that I could walk from here to Harper's house, halfway across town (and Paris, New York, was a gigantic town with a huge population), especially in the physical state I was in- skinny as a bean pole and completely out of shape, easily winded and gasping for breath just from walking up a single flight of stairs. It looked like I was going to be here for awhile, maybe even a few hours, depending on how long Monica and Phoebus's rough sex- I, um, I mean, _business_, was going to take.

Why had I agreed to come here in the first place?

I found myself trying to swallow, saliva trickling down my throat and creeping past the huge, icy blockade that made it nearly impossible to breathe._ A drink_. I needed a drink. Thinking about it, it's actually tremendously sad that a sixteen year old girl's first instinct is a strange situation is needing a drink. Being with Harper had sort of forced that sense of nature down my throat. Making my way past countless curvy girls in tiny dresses and tall, handsome men in loose jeans and dressy sweatshirts (if that was even a thing), I approached one of the tables lined against the wall, various bottles of alcohol and random beverages scattered across them. Shards of broken glass had been swept underneath the table, as if people would notice that they weren't there and forget about them until the time came for the room to be cleaned.

Standing to my right was a girl, a head or so shorter than I was, talking her head off to a boy with long, dark hair and icy cold eyes. I took in as much of her looks as I could out of my peripheral vision, because when you're standing by yourself at a party, drowning a bottle of liquor, you really have nothing better to be doing with your time. Her hair was completely made up of tiny, walnut brown curls that cascaded down the back of her shoulders, complimenting the dress that she wore- a deep, violet color that hugged her curves perfectly, a large bow sewn into the back at her waist. Her skin was a pale shade, easily picking up every color emitted from the multicolored lights and letting them soak into her skin tone. Her eyes, a soft brown, seemed to radiate with a sort of warmth, even from behind the thin, rectangular glasses that covered them.

"-and I know that he's cute, and his hair is really poofy and gelled up all the time," she was saying to the boy next to her, her mouth moving at the constant speed of light, each word overlapping the next, "but I never knew that my friend liked him." I stopped, letting the swirling liquor in my bottle become still. I knew that voice, knew it too well, light, yet powerful and sudden, like a high-pitched gong ringing after hours of complete silence.

I couldn't help but put a hand on her shoulder and pull her back a little. "_Adrianna_?"

She froze, jumping a little underneath my touch, startled as I pulled my hand away. The girl turned around, her chestnut curls swaying with each movement she made, tickling the ends of her shoulders. Her eyes widened, mouth dropping open to form a perfect 'O' shape "_Leslo_?" She reached out a hand and touched my shoulder, fingers running up my neck and brushing against the line of my jaw, feather-light and soft as rain, as if she had to touch me to actually prove to herself that I was there. Immediately, her hands flew to the edges of her cheekbones, eyes widening and irises glowing. "Holy shit, _Leslo_! What the hell are _you_ doing here?"

So it was her. "I could ask _you_ the same question." Adrianna was more of an indoor kind of person, who would much rather spend the day texting and going on twitter than going out to social events, let alone clubs and large parties like this one ("But I don't want to go out! That requires moving, and moving requires effort! And I don't have effort! If I can't get out of bed to spend six hours doing nothing, what makes you think that I'll be able to get out of the house and spend three hours socializing? It's simple fucking logic.") "I thought that you and Jamie were at your place hanging out-"

Adrianna held up an index finger, cutting me off rather abruptly. "Give me _one_ second." She spun around on her heels, hair twirling in a circular motion and swaying at her shoulders. "Sorry, Sean, but I have to talk to someone about something." The dark-haired boy standing next to her raised an eyebrow, as if saying, "_Bitch, please, I'm the only one at this party worth talking to._" Adrianna sighed, starting to twiddle her thumbs, and gave Sean an apologizing look, nodding as the boy rudely dismissed her with a wave of his hand and took off into the crowd of masked strangers, just like Phoebus had done to me.

She turned back to me, hair and body twirling on the balls of her feet, and I gave her a strange look. "Who was _that_?"

"Sean Harley," she replied, speaking as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "You know him?" I shook my head no. "Well, he's dating one of Niall's friends, that guy named Brian."

"_Who_?"

Adrianna gave an aggravated sigh, letting the air slide out of a small opening in between her pale lips. "Honestly, Leslo," she groaned, giving me a light punch in the ribs, "you don't know _anyone_."

That, of course, wasn't true, and I made a quick mental note to remind her of that later. I knew a lot of people in the school- too many people, some of which that I'd like to forget that I know, especially a certain golden-haired jock with a bit of a stuffed shirt.

"Brian Mabel, one of Niall's friends. He's going out with Sean, which I literally _just _found out a few minutes ago." Adrianna smiled, her lips stretching from one side of her face to the other, sharpening her cheekbones and lifting her entire posture. "I honestly think that they're _adorable_. Their ship name is Srian. Isn't that _cute_? It just rolls right off the tongue!" She was speaking through giggles now, staccato bursts of laughter, like tiny wind chimes, a habit of hers that occurs when she's overly excited or faced with something that she really loves, which probably explains the amount of laughter that she gave off whenever she was around her boyfriend, Niall. Or just because Niall was a total dork inside the body of a Hollister model, and it made people laugh hysterically. Either one was possible.

"_Srian_," she spoke slowly, tasting the syllables and rolling the word around with her tongue. "Srian. Srian. It's basically mouth porn."

I smiled, her comment pulling forcefully at the corners of my lips and brightening up my expression. "_Right_." I shook my head, shaking off the conversation and remembering to get back to the subject. "So, anyway, what the hell are you doing here? I thought that you and Jamie were hanging out at your place for the night-"

"We _were_," Adrianna began to explain, starting to roll her eyes at the fact that she had been spending New Year's eve cooped up in a tiny apartment without any alcohol, "and then Monica tweeted that there was going to be a huge party at her house tonight. Since Jamie and I had nothing to do except play Mario Kart and watch Pitch Perfect all night, we figured, why the hell not, you know?" She began to giggle again, rolling her eyes as if thinking that coming here was the greatest idea since sliced bread. I raised an eyebrow. Was this really the Adrianna that I knew, who strayed far away from big crowds and would rather spend the day on Twitter than get out of her room and spend time in public? Either she was drunk, high, or just doing that 'new year, new me, so I'm going to change literally everything about myself and expect people to like me' kind of thing that sluts did _(I'm sorry, but if you're a hoe today, you're gonna be a hoe tomorrow)_. And Adrianna wasn't a hoe, so that couldn't be it… "_Anyway_-"

"But I thought that you hated Monica," I interrupted, furrowing my brows.

She smacked her lips distastefully, letting her tongue roll around in her mouth for awhile before selecting the right words, speaking as if she were sending back a plate of disgusting food at a restaurant. "I _do_, boo, I _do_, and I still think that she's the biggest whore in all of Paris, New York, but hey," her face brightened, and she nudged me as if she and I were sharing a piece of juicy gossip, "when you're stuck in a stuffy little apartment with nothing but a bag of Lay's chips and a few cans of coke, you get bored _very_ easily. And I heard that Monica's parties were the place to be. As I said before, boo, why the hell not?"

I nodded slowly, still taking in her words. Seriously, was this the same Adrianna that I had called up merely five hours ago? How twisted had her personality become since she arrived at this party, since the clock had struck midnight and signaled the very start of the year two thousand and fifteen? "And where did the dress come from?"

Adrianna pursed her lips and crossed her arms sarcastically across her lower chest. "Bitch, you ask too many questions." The knot in my stomach, painful and sharp, untangled itself, a weight being lifted right off of my shoulders. So she was the same Adrianna. I didn't know how I would be able to cope if she wasn't. "It's my mom's."

"Why are you wearing your mom's dress?"

"Because I don't own any dresses, and my mom and I basically share clothes now, since we're the same height and all."

"But not the same boob size." Her tits were basically overflowing out of her dress, and how her boobs weren't popping out of the top was beyond me.

My friend shrugged passively. "_Eh_. I guess I get it from my dad's side of the family. Half black, remember?" She looked down at her breasts curiously, giving them both a light, fascinated poke, gaining a snort from me. "Now, why are you here?" Adrianna looked up and crossed her arms over her boobs, which were bulging out of the top of her tiny red dress (which, for some odd reason, reminded me of how Monica wore her clothes). "You're the last person that I expected to see at this party. I thought that you were spending the night with Harper at _his_ place."

"Harper and Gabrielle had sex."

Adrianna froze, her expression ice cold and stance rock solid as I let the words linger in my mouth for a little while longer. It took her a few moments to chose an emotion that suited her, and when she did, she looked like she was going to kill someone- literally. Her hands were clenching themselves into fists and then de-clenching over and over again, brows furrowing into each other, eyes in flames- or maybe it was because of the red lights that dotted her skin, making every feature about her look more red and raging. Her stance was stone hard, muscles contracting and pushing into each other, like she was a statue, crafted by a man filled with all the hatred and sadness of the world, everything he'd ever become angry about, all knotted together and welled up in his chest- she was just fucking pissed off, okay? When she opened her mouth and spoke, the voice wasn't hers- it was the voice of a girl with a chest stuffed up with darkness and flames of rage. "That _fucking_ bitch ass-"

"And I _think_ that he hit me." My words were soft, meek, completely drowned out by the pounding music and the laughter of the students that were constantly bumping into me and cutting in front of Adrianna and I to grab a drink off of the table beside us. I couldn't hear myself speak- but somehow, Adrianna did.

"You _think_ that he hit you?" Adrianna gasped, her ears seeming to perk upwards like a dog's her cold, rock hard stance vanishing as she came to life again, letting her mouth drop open and form a perfect 'O' shape, as if she wasn't already shocked enough. The look on her face told me that if I didn't back away within the next few seconds, she was going to slap me out of pure rage- however, it was more like a shock than fury, her hands shaking and arms vibrating from an overwhelming wave of emotion. However, instead of pushing me away, Adrianna pulled me closer, holding my face towards the dull, watery looking light, brushing her fingers against the curves and creases in my face, inspecting me for any kind of red mark or indication that I had been assaulted. "Being slapped by a man isn't something that you should _think_, Leslie. It's something that you should just _know_."

"I don't know, I don't remember much about it." She gave me a strange look, raising her eyebrows and pressing her lips shut, examining my face more carefully. She had to stand on her tiptoes to be at eye level with me, and even then, I had to crouch down. Adrianna was very tiny, a lot shorter than me, so cute and bubbly, even when she was angered, that you just wanted to shrink her down and put her in your pocket. "I was a bit too tipsy to remember what _exactly_ happened."

"Since when do you get 'a bit too tipsy'? That's my job."

"Since Harper."

"It's amazing how easily guys can manipulate girls." My heart gave another huge lurch, like the driver of a car slamming on the breaks unexpectedly, putting all passengers at risk of a major heart attack. Adrianna hadn't had much experience with relationships, Niall being the only boyfriend that she'd ever had, but could give me extremely wise advice about break ups, cute boys, or just love in general. The things that came out of her mouth were things that you would hear coming from women who had been in relationships longer than I've been alive.

She pushed me away, nodding as if to tell me that I looked alright. "You don't have any bruises or anything. If he did hit you, he didn't hit you hard."

"Thank _God_," I muttered, letting Adrianna's arms drop to her sides. "I don't know how I could have explained it to my mom if there was."

Adrianna's eyes widened, and she stepped back. She would have fallen down, if not for her right foot having been placed behind her, supporting her leaning body and keeping her up. "You're not going to tell her?"

"Well, of _course_ I'm gonna tell her that he cheated on me, but not that he may have hit me." I wanted to cry, for some reason, a pressure building up in the front of my skull, pushing against the back of my eyeballs, irritating as hell but easy to put up with. Don't cry, I thought, repeating the words over and over again in my head, their strange echo bouncing across the walls of my skull. _Leslie, don't you dare fucking cry_. I'd chosen to start my year with a party, not a sobbing session. "I want to be honest with her, but I don't want to get Harper in trouble."

Adrianna looked at me like I was an idiot, which, by the way, I really was. "I think that having sex with a hoe while being taken by another bitch gets him in trouble." Fuck. Now I was really crying, the whispers of tears gently brushed across my eyeballs, reddening the ends of my eyelids, some even going as far as crawling down my lower set of lashes and hanging at the ends, weighing each individual lash down, tears that would definitely spill if they came in any kind of contact with my skin. "Besides, that asshole needs all the punishment that he can get. Nobody cheats on Leslay's Chips and gets away with it." I didn't understand how she could hear my voice underneath all the screams and pulsing rap, but couldn't see the tears streaked across my eyes through the dull light.

Without thinking about it, Adrianna grabbed a large bottle decorated with various limes and sombreros, strange sayings in Mexican scrawled across the label. She began to pour a few drinks, watching as the thick, icy beverage pushed itself out of the bottle and was dumped into the SOLO cups in lumpy globs. "Well, I'm glad you came down here. Nothing like a margarita to drink away the sorrows." Adrianna handed me a cup, smiling proudly as she held up the other in her less dominant hand. "To Leslo, am I right?"

For awhile, I just stood there, completely frozen, letting the tears hanging on my eyelashes become chilled in the silence that followed Adrianna's words. Even the pounding, over-controlling music had become dulled. After what seemed like an infinity, compressed and tightened up into a small fraction of a second, the tears that had hung at the edges of my eyelashes hit against my cheek, and they spilled, wetting my red face and creating the affect of a slow, steady stream. "I need air." That was the only response I could give, the only thing I could say to her. I wasn't mad at her, or upset- I didn't blame her for anything. How could I, when all she had done for me throughout the past few years was uplift me and provide me with the most supportive attitude I've ever known?

I spun around on my heel, ignoring whatever she was trying to say to get me to go back- I didn't want to go back. I didn't want to face her. I wasn't mad, as I mentioned before- I just couldn't face an apology at the moment. I wanted to be alone- and that was what I'd needed from the moment that Harper admitted to me that he was cheating. Space. Time by myself. Time to heal and to cry alone.

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><p>It took me a few minutes to find a bathroom, one that was mostly empty, save for the deafening silence that bounced across the walls and crawled up the edges of my skin. I had no clue if this was a boy's or girl's bathroom, and frankly, I didn't care. It was the only room in the house that was silent, empty, the only room that reflected my emotions. Everything in here was white, pearly white and perfect, from the tiles on the floor to the blank ceiling and the half-walls that covered up the separate stalls. Miscellaneous perfumes and soaps lined the countertop of sinks, the only things in the room that were colored in the slightest, save for the makeup that was streaked across the edges of the sinks, dark mascaras and violet-red lipsticks. I could envision clusters of curvy girls gathered in this very bathroom, adjusting their boobs in their dresses and decorating themselves with makeup, talking about boys and who wore what yesterday and God knows what else. But now, the only person that was here was me, Leslie Summer, a girl with not as much of a reputation, a girl who wasn't invisible but was to certain social groups who had no idea who I am, a girl who was just cheated on by her boyfriend and let the very idea claw at the deepest parts of her and distort her emotions.<p>

I was too busy, enveloped in the glass case of emotion that had blocked up my airways and pulled tears from my eyes like a never ending rope, that I didn't notice the door creaking open, someone entering the room, then casually shutting the door behind them. Being in your own little world gives you the power to drown out almost everything around you, letting you block out the rest of the universe and focus only on yourself. This works best when the world that you're in is constructed of negative emotions, feelings of sadness and anger, walls built of tears and floors made of agonizing screams. All you can feel is yourself and the darkness pushing against your throat, pleading to be let out. So of course I didn't notice this stranger. I was too wrapped up in my own castle of emotion, looking at my pale white face in the mirror, even the deep red acne scars on my chin becoming white, matching the bathroom walls.

Yes, I didn't notice the person who had walked in at all. Not until he ran right into me, his entire body colliding with the side of my back.

My shoulder blades stung with pain, my lower back seeming to groan as I spun around, the glass that made up my castle shattering into billions of tiny shards, lining the floor and making it possible for anyone to step on them and cut their feet open. "Hey, _watch_ it!" I snapped, letting my eyes fall upon the boy. My brows furrowed. "Look where you're going next time." The glass on the floor stood up on end, their sharp creases threatening all who dare step upon them.

The boy backed up, making himself shorter and trembling. My eyebrows heightened. Would it kill him to make his face shown? The entire upper half of his body was covered with a baggy, gray sweatshirt, his head buried under the hood, which cast a dark shadow over the front of his face, mysterious and a bit creepy. I could barely make out the glowing of two emerald colored eyes, light green flashlights, beaming through the dark curtain. His legs, thighs thick but calves thin as toothpicks, trembled, and he almost fell back onto the floor. I could make out what seemed to be a hunched back behind his head, like he'd hidden a basketball on top of his upper back. "I-I'm _sorry_." He sputtered, his voice meek and powerless, like he was a peasant apologizing for interrupting the speech of a queen. Yet, there was an air of elegance in his voice, purity, like a drop of water from a steady, pure stream. "I d-didn't mean to, I r-really didn't!"

I was going to scold him again, turn around and continue trying to glue together the shards of my glass castle, but something stopped me, cemented my mouth shut and kept me standing on the floor where I was. _Leslie, you've been rude to enough people tonight. You wanted to start feeling better? Be kind for a change._

Wow. _Change_. That was a big word, the word that millions will use to describe a new year, but very few will actually put into action. Change is a very loose word, tossed around and played with until it has lost its meaning completely, a word that it used until people realize that the word is just a word, that no action is connected to it, that the word is just there to bring people false hope and to uplift others, only to have them pulled back down again. Change is a word that is severely involved in my life, a word that has pulled me down so much that the word itself, instead of being a beacon of hope and light, has become hollow, broken, empty and desolate, just as I once was.

Well, that wasn't the case with me, or I assumed so, anyway. "It's fine, I guess." I brushed myself off, rubbing the front of my thighs with the palms of my hands. "I just got a bit startled, that's all. Are you okay?" _Good, Leslie, very good. Asking him if he's okay. You're putting yourself into a better mood already._

The boy seemed to stand up straighter, letting his arms unfurl and hang at his sides lazily. I could make out a few stands of stringy, fiery red hair through the darkness of the shadow that covered his face from my view. "Y-yes, I'm f-fine." It was as if he was a frightened child, trying to act brave to prove to a younger sibling that they were fearless, that they were better than everybody else. His hands, huge and meaty, were shaking violently, and I could make out the glinting of something red coated on one of them through the corner of my eye.

I pressed my lips together, then opened them and spoke, my voice starting to tremble a bit. Being kind around this boy was easy, surprisingly, as if he was the cause of all the tears being sucked back into my eyes and all the glass of my castle dulling, becoming less sharp, less easier to cut yourself on. "You sure? You look kind of shaken up." I took a few steps forward, reaching out my hand, and he jumped, hands seeming to vibrate with fear. I pulled my hand back again, softening up my expression as I noticed the deep, bloody cut that had been dug across the palm of his left hand. "Oh, _damn_, you're bleeding."

He pulled his hand back, hiding it behind his body, as if that would get me to forget about it. "I'm okay, _really_-"

"Here, I think I have a band-aid." I pushed a hand down the back pocket of my jeans, feeling around through the denim. _Nothing_. I reached out my hand just as quickly, opening my palm and waiting for him to put his bloody hand in mine, praying that I wouldn't get any blood on my t-shirt. He did, but extremely slowly, moving his arm out in slow motion, as if waiting for me to bite or hit him. Every second was stretched out into years, every moment slow, yet brightened, electrified somehow. Although he was moving slowly, and his face was covered, I could sense the emotion radiating out of him, fear, curiosity, confusion. The room was warmer, as if it were being heated from his simple expressions, and I felt my neck beginning to warm up. Did the very universe revolve around this boy, did the world depend on him for their source of heat energy?

Our fingers brushed up against each other, and I shivered. His touch was soft, tickling, yet electrifying, like the blood in my fingers had become electrified and began to boil, the palm of my hand starting to redden. At last, his hand dove into mine, my palm clasped against the back of his hand, and it took me a moment to actually remember what I was doing. His hand was soft, silky, even, and as I pulled his palm up to my face to examine the cut further, all I could think about was how warm it was in the room and how the glass that had broken off of the barrier to my world was on the floor, melting into liquid, no longer sharp whatsoever, smooth and watery.

"_Ouch_," I groaned, letting the index finger of my free hand brush across the scar on his open palm, blood oozing out of the opening in his skin. He started to curl his fingers in and almost closed his hand into a fist multiple times, and I could feel him cringing, as if he were waiting for me to harm him. "Five millimeters deep, two inches long. Here, wash it out, first. Ah, _damn_, that's _really_ bloody."

I gave his arm a light tug, motioning to the sink, and he followed me, hesitantly placing his arm underneath the faucet, the pool of blood gathered in his palm beginning to run into the sink. I turned on the cold water, and he pulled his hand back, gasping at the stinging feeling. However, I held onto the back of his hand, gripping it, giving no sign of letting go. "It's alright," I reassured him, the words slipping out of my mouth without any thought. "It's okay." He was still shaking a bit, legs wobbly, as if he were lightheaded due to my presence. Had he ever been touched by a girl before? It seemed as though he never had, like this was his first time coming into contact with a female. How strange. "I'm not going to hurt you, I _promise_." I began to pull his hand back under the sink, and he didn't argue, letting the cold water run over his hand again.

"How do you know so much about scars?" There it was, his voice again, elegant and pure, that steady stream of water breaking the case of silence. A smile tugged at the corners of my lips and I let it brighten my face, then let it vanish as I took his question into consideration. I couldn't answer it. It would make me sound insane, and I'd been in a situation where I'd been deemed insane- it's a story for another time, a story that actually may never come up, but it wasn't very enjoyable, a situation where I'd felt like I really was in that glass case, one that I hadn't constructed myself and one that had been forced around me.

"I've had a _lot_ of my own." Each of my ex-boyfriends was a scar. Every friend that's ever betrayed me was a scar. My father was a scar, a deep one. I wanted to tell this boy that not all scars are visible, but that would be saying too much. Why would I speak about invisible cuts?

I shut the water off quickly, the streaming sound ending with a soft 'squeak'. His cut was pale now, fading into the light, peachy color of his skin. I was sure that I'd let the water run over it enough to stop the bleeding, knew that my work was probably done, so I let go of his hand, feeling the cold air wrap around my palm, the absence of his skin heavy and deep, yet silent and light at the same time. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." My cheeks grew warm, his voice soft, both words gently spoken, as if saying them too loud would harm me. Without thinking about it, I spun around on my heel, ready to leave, forgetting all about being upset or about the glass castle that I'd constructed just minutes ago.

"W-_wait_!"

I turned around, startled by his voice, heightened and afraid, like he didn't want me to leave- like leaving was the last thing that I could possibly do.

"What's your name?"

I shot him a smile, watching those emerald lights staring directly into my blue-green ones, kicking away the last remains of my room of glass. "Leslie." And with that, I was gone, a beam of warmth glowing in my chest as I strode out into the sea of masked strangers.

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><p><strong>LONG CHAPTER IS LONG HOLY SHIT.<strong>

**So, um, mind reviewing? I know that this chapter has taken up a lot of your time, but reviewing only takes a minute or so. Remember, every review puts a smile on my face, whether it be insane criticism or random fangirling. I love all reviews. They're my best friends. We have tea together and go to nightclubs and defend hunchbacks from Frollo and shit.  
><strong>

**Speaking of defending hunchbacks, I think I'm going to make chapter three my version of the Feast of Fools. This party wouldn't seem really relevant without it. In On My Own, I never got up to the FOF, and it was already chapter 11... I want to speed things along in this story, since I have like three to five subplots (I can't even count at the moment) and the main story is long as hell.**

**Anyway, hopefully chapter three will be up sometime next week.**

**I love you all. Thank you for taking time out of your busy days to read my story :)**

**~Leslo**


	3. Give Him What He Deserves

**Actual conversation that my friends and I have actually had:**

**Me: Oh guys, speaking of which, if I write a sequel to Breathe I'm naming it...**

**Jamie: ...**

**Sean: ...**

**Me: Choke.**

**Jamie: *dies***

**Sean: *dies***

**Me: Because Breathe, Choke, get it?**

**Sean: And you can write a prequel and name it Oxygen.**

**Sean: And the one after Choke could be CO2**

**Jamie: And the one after CO2 would be CO. And the one after that is Death.**

**Sean: Imagine a movie called CO and the sequel is CO2**

**(at this point we're dying and banging our heads against the wall)**

**Me: Wouldn't it be Breathe, Choke, and THEN Die?**

**Jamie: No, it would be Suffocate**

**Me: Oh**

**Jamie: Oh**

**Sean: Oh**

**Sean: Oh2**

**Jamie: Choke**

**Sean: Oxygen**

**Me: Breathe**

**Jamie: Asphyxiate**

**Me: Suffocation**

**Sean: New movie- C-Oh2**

**And then we talked about Sean's fanfic in which I have fire powers and the government uses me to burn down the houses of people who don't pay their taxes. And then we talked about condoms of steel.**

**This is what I do when I'm not writing. My friends are better than yours.**

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><p><strong>Before I forget, I'd like to thank the fantabulous reviewers:<strong>

**Lone-Soprano-of-Sopranoland**

**DontEvenLookatMe**

**TheBeautifulDreamer**

**lapierredx01**

**ANYTHINGGOES31**

**xxxMadameMysteryxxx**

***hands all of you chocolate hearts* *but they're solid chocolate hearts**not the cheap hollow ones that you buy at walmart for two dollars***

**I'm SOOOO sorry that it took so long, but play rehearsal and instagram and twitter and yeah I just got lazy. Please do not kill me I love all of you. Since I'm off from school this week, I hope to get chapter 4 published by Sunday, if that's even going to happen. But it can, if I just stop slacking off.**

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><p><strong>I need to make my author's notes shorter. <strong>

**Here's chapter twee finally:**

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><p><strong>Chapter Three: Give Him What He Deserves<strong>

By the time I arrived back at the table, Adrianna was hysterical with apology, cramming an "I'm sorry" in between every other word, giving me speeches and paragraphs and essays regarding how terrible she felt for having brought such negative feelings up and how badly she wanted to take everything back.

"Adrianna," I would say comfortingly, trying to get her to shut up and accept that the fault wasn't hers. "Adrianna, _please_, it's okay-"

"No it's _not_!" she'd wail, stomping her foot and sticking out her lower lip, insisting that she continue with her essay of apologies, and would keep rambling on and on about how terrible she was to have caused me to feel like this. She would have gone off all night, refusing to let me leave until she'd felt that she'd said enough for me to take "forgiving her" into consideration, if not for the dark skinned girl standing to her left who, thankfully, shoved a plastic cup full of the remains of a bottle of tequila in her face, putting the drink right under her nose, allowing Adrianna to take a deep whiff of it, which shut her up for the time being.

"Drink," the girl ordered. "_Now_." And sure enough, when Adrianna drank, she became silent, her words replaced by the flowing of smooth, flavorful liquor. My first thought was that there was no way in hell that Adrianna was driving home tonight. She was practically falling over her own toes just standing still, her head tilting from side to side on its axis, streaks of tears brushed across her eyeballs. She was tipsy, maybe even a bit drunk, and if she even touched the wheel of a car, something would explode, and it had better not be something of mine.

I turned to the girl, letting a sharp sigh escape from the gap in between my lips. "_Thank_ you."

She smiled, subtly rolling her deep brown eyes. "No problem," she replied, her voice full of a sarcastic kind of playfulness. "I wanted her trap shut as much as you did."

This, if you may have been wondering, was Jamie, the third of our trio and a less frequent drinker than Adrianna was (thank God for that). She was probably one of the dressiest people at the party- a deep green cocktail dress crafted from light fabric, the ends of which would move with the air a she walked, like waves kissing the shoreline of a beach, free and light and mystical, like the dress you would see on a fairy princess. Unlike Adrianna's skin, which soaked up each color of the lights that had been projected from the ceiling, Jamie's dark skin took each individual light and diminished it, letting almost no color fall onto her. It was like she was a light herself, brighter than all others, letting herself push away the dull colors and cast a warm glow upon the room. She was refreshing to look at, the weight of the world being hoisted from my shoulders as we made eye contact. Jamie was relaxation; Jamie was a breath of fresh air, Jamie was Jamie, and that's all I wanted her to be.

Adrianna, having inhaled the last of the tequila, lazily opened her hands and let the red, plastic cup drop to the floor with a sharp pat. "Fuck you guys."

Jamie smiled sarcastically, wrapping an arm around the chestnut haired girl's shoulders, balancing Adrianna's swerving stance. "I love you too, babe. Don't worry, I'm driving."

"But we took two cars." Adrianna clucked her tongue in a low-tuned way, gaze dropping to the empty cup on the floor. "_Fuck_."

I put up a hand, directing the attention to myself. "I can take Adrianna's car home, if you want." I shrugged, silently hoping that I was sober enough to drive.

Jamie raised an eyebrow quizzically, biting the end of her lips. "You didn't drive here?"

"Phoebus Chandler drove me."

I spoke the words without any care or effort, but the reaction on the girls' faces were absolutely priceless, lower jaws dislocating from their skulls, pale faced and stone cold, as if they'd seen a ghost, something beyond logical explanation. I wanted to giggle, but the sounds had been stolen from my throat before I could make them.

I furrowed my brows as I cleared my throat, hoping that I'd be able to speak instead. "Why is that so hard to believe?"

Adrianna looked like she was going to slap me in the face, giving me a look of disbelief, some features indicating that the alcohol had begun to affect her emotions, like the way her cheekbones sagged and how her eyes had begun to turn yellow at the corners. "Because he's _Phoebus_, nigga! He's the most womanizing, idiotic, _selfish_-"

"_Exactly_." I subconsciously reached over to the table, something deep inside of me pleading for more liquor, maybe a glass of beer or a sip of tequila, when Jamie reached out and locked my wrist in between her index finger and thumb, the pressure reddening my skin immediately. She had a rough grasp.

"Then why the fuck did you let him drive you here!?" she demanded, our eyes meeting. When Jamie was annoyed, her voice became deep and terribly exaggerated, like her vocal cords had been pulled apart and stretched out. It was as though she was speaking with another voice, dragging and scratchy, like an old record. She was shocked, more shocked than I'd ever seen her before, the tips of her large cheekbones whitening with disbelief. "If you think that he's so-"

"He found me crying on the side of the road and insisted that he take me here," I explained, twiddling my thumbs and looking up at the two of them sheepishly. "That's the condensed version, anyway."

"You're drunk," Adrianna inferred, having no available thought to come up with any other assumptions.

"Oh, yeah," I added, letting the memory slip through the cracks in my lips, "he was drunk, too. Admitted to drinking before driving over."

Adrianna gasped, furrowing her brows and letting her lips part on their own. She and Jamie were silent for a moment, their lips opening and closing rapidly, nothing but stretched out silence coming out. "I am going to slap you," she finally spoke, her voice dull and drained of any trace of energy.

I gave another shrug, my shoulders sore from the tightness of my bra. "Go ahead. I deserve it."

I expected her to actually slap me, to drag a palm across the side of my face and leave behind a dull magenta color on my skin. "Uh-_oh_." Jamie's voice rang out, now back to normal, all hers once more. She sounded serious, shaky, rushed to tell us something. "Alert, _alert_." I looked into her eyes, which were gazing towards something just around the side of my head, irises seeming to diminish and vibrate at the very sight of whatever it was she was staring at. Her lips grew paler, and for a moment, I thought that she was choking, remembering how pale and ghostly my mother's lips had gotten when she nearly died of choking on a piece of broccoli. Thin, dull and lifeless, like all color had been sucked out of them due to a vampire's craving for blood.

I didn't want to turn around, the very image of Jamie's ghostly expression frightening me. "Ex-boyfriend alert, or-?"

She shook her head, letting her lips quiver a bit before responding. "Look."

I was hesitant to spin around, not exactly sure what I was expecting to see, but I turned, planting my feet firmly on the ground and gazing out at the sea of bodies that had crammed themselves into the basement of the mansion. After a moment or so of searching, my eye was hooked onto a rather unusual figure leaning by the staircase at the very end of the room. I had to squint to make out the features of this person, my vision stinging and dulling underneath the diminishing lights that decorated the room. It was a man, obviously, a tall one, long head and broad shoulders seen clearly over the sea of sweaty bodies and curly hairstyles. His skin was a sickly shade of pale white, seeming to indicate that he was about to vomit all over the concrete floor, eyes dark and gloomy, as if his irises had been coated over with a sweep of black paint. He was obviously of old age, skin tired and sagging, wrinkles and lines etched into every corner. Even his elongated nose seemed to sag, the bridge coated in a thick, oily patch of skin, the tip of his nose sharp and pointed outwards. His hair, a deep, powdery gray, was extremely short, several clumps of strands curling around his small ears.

His lips were very thin and pale, barely there at all, almost disappearing into the rest of his face. He smacked them distastefully, glaring around the room with a sneer painted across his face, as if he were thinking about how low these teenagers were compared to him, how highly ranked his was in this city, how many connections he had to the federal law. Sometimes, someone's expression is so vibrant that you seem to be able to read their thoughts.

"Claude Frollo." Even over the booming music and the screaming of the crowd, I could hear Jamie's voice without even looking at her.

I felt the edges of my chest start to chill, barely able to hear the crackling of ice in my ears as the mayor's executive assistant rolled his eyes and leaned against the wall. There were patches of dirt rubbed into the pattern of his polo shirt, and I could barely see red and blue veins popping out of his arm, as if they were embedded into his skin.

Noticing that his gaze was drifting towards us, I spun around on the balls of my feet. Jamie was still staring at him, the whites of her eyes developing a chilling air about them. Adrianna, however, was staring at the empty solo cup that she had dropped on the ground, the edges of her eyes bloodshot and puffy, swaying on her heels and mumbling things to herself that I could barely understand. "Fucking hypocritical-"

Jamie clucked her tongue, lips starting to quiver as her eyes were pulled back to the tipsy girl next to her.. "You've got that right."

Adrianna looked up, shaking her head rapidly and throwing her arms up into the air as if she were about to prove something to us. "No, no. He talks about how alcohol and loud music and parties and breathing are like the spawn of Monica-

I held up a finger. "-you mean Satan-"

"-same thing. He always bitches on and on about how we need to be abstinent and not party and be pure and stuff, and he shows up here." Drunk people have three emotions- rambling on and on about something either relevant or completely irrelevant to the topic of the conversation, sitting in a corner half asleep, and bouncing off the walls, twerking on every wall and sending stupid texts to half the school. Adrianna fit the first one perfectly, and I was deeply afraid that she was going to hit number three soon, or possibly number two.

"I mean, it's not like he's going to slow down, grab the wall and start wiggling like he's try'na make his old, saggy ass fall off, but if he actually believed that these kinds of parties were the work of demons, why would he be anywhere near this place?"

Jamie put a hand to her temple, shutting her eyes and groaning in frustration. "Damn it, Adrianna, now all I can think about is Frollo twerking."

"Nigga, that's not the point."

I raised an eyebrow, taking this thought into consideration. "Maybe to find more kids to expel?" As if the power-abusing bastard hadn't influenced the way our school was run enough.

Jamie shrugged. "I can only assume so. I don't see any other explanation."

We paused for a moment, Jamie taking a second to wrap an arm around Adrianna's waist, letting her fingers run over the soft, violet colored fabric of the dress. Adrianna and Jamie ("Jadrianna", as they were referred to by some) were entirely inseparable, one arm always intertwined with the other's waist, one head always buried in the other's chest. They'd been like this since seventh grade, closer than sisters, and valued each other more than they valued their own parents. I assumed that a majority of the school believed that they were dating, despite the fact that Adrianna had a boyfriend. I didn't blame them, seeing the way that the two acted around each other.

"He's running for mayor in the spring, you know."

My gaze met Jamie's, heart starting to burn as she continued to speak.. "As if being the mayor's executive assistant wasn't enough." She shook her head, letting her straight, dark chocolate locks rub against the end of her shoulders. "Who would vote for him, anyway?"

I crossed my arms, gaze drifting back to the table, shattered glasses piling up at the edges. "You'd be surprised," I said.

Out of nowhere, a rough voice shook the ground, loud, scratchy and pulsing, like the blood in his words were pounding, surging through his syllables. I couldn't make out what he were saying over the blasting music, but I heard, spinning around on my heel to try and witness what he'd begun to yell about. Many other partygoers had the same idea, moving quickly towards the source of the sound and creating a crowd around the center of the dance floor, a tightly packed ring made of both tall and short teenagers. I was about to focus my gaze onto whatever was happening that caused the deep voice to boom and bounce across the walls, but my vision was blocked due to a tall boy stepping directly in front of me, filling in the gaps of the wall of students.

I turned to Jamie, giving her a questioning look, as if to ask what we were supposed to do. She didn't even turn to me, too wrapped up in what was occurring in the center of the circle, standing on the very edges of her toes and waving her hands awkwardly as to balance herself. Even then, she was nearly unable to see what was going on, just being an inch or two shorter than I was. I didn't even bother to look over my shoulder at Adrianna, knowing that she was jumping up and down and maybe shoving people out of the way in order to be able to see, the tiny little thing that she was.

Slowly, I propelled myself up onto the balls of my feet, allowing my head to reach over the wall of students, my eyes brushing over the crowd before hooking onto the scene that was playing out in the middle of the ring. A boy, approximately six feet tall, give or take a few inches, was standing firmly in the middle of the dance floor, the lights on the ground reflecting across his creamy white t-shirt, colors mixing together in a vibrant wave of light. His skin was a tan color, absorbing some light that had been reflected onto it, but even from where I was standing, I could make out the red patches of anger that were strewn across his forehead, brows furrowing into each other and dark eyes chilled over, like his irises had been dipped into a patch of freezing water, making his entire figure seem more icy and dark. His hands, large and meaty, were clenched into fists, blue and red veins popping out of each individual knuckle. And, finally, the most noticeable feature about him, although I really wouldn't call it a feature, was the large piece of glass wedged into his forearm, soaking up spurts of hot, thin blood, the skin around it turning a deep purple and puffing up.

Standing about a foot below him, cowering away and pulling his hood further down his face, was a familiar figure, the cuts on his meaty hands turning bright red, blood threatening to spill from them. The boy whose cuts I had cleaned up.

I felt my lips becoming dry, moisture evaporating into the air. This was mostly due to the revolting sight of the glass being wedged into the taller boy's arm, skin puffing up and conforming to the sharp shard. A deafening silence filled the room, somebody having shut the music off immediately, and the area was silent, nothing to be heard but the ghost of the booming sound echoing in my sore ears.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence, nothing but the stare of a large teenager intimidating a cowering, shaking boy, his hands vibrating with fear, hood pulled over the face that he wouldn't allow anyone to see. Adrianna tapped me on the shoulder, earning my gaze. "What's happening?"

I looked down at her short figure, nibbling at the edges of my lips. "I don't-"

"So this kid," he announced, gaining my attention once more, his deep voice bouncing across the walls of the room, coating my stomach in a thin layer of ice, "runs into me with a broken bottle of jack." He cleared his throat, pausing, letting the ice in the back of my throat become colder, and continued. "The glass goes into my skin-" he gestured to the shard of dark glass which had been wedged into him, blood squirting out of the sides of the cut, "-and this asshole claims it was an accident."

Asshole. The word was like thunder, shaking each individual glass of liquor, both resting on tables and on the floor. A collective laughter sounded from the crowd, giggles and chuckles filling each corner of the room and being absorbed into the concrete walls. I, however, found it impossible to do anything- move, breathe, speak. The scene had taken each word from my throat and replaced it with a chilling lump that blocked off my airways. I was completely motionless, frozen into the backdrop of time itself.

"You _tell_ him, Donovan!" a voice yelled out, hooting and coated in laughter. Donovan. I hadn't heard the name before, and it rang in the back of my head, like somebody had spoken important directions in a foreign language. Maybe he was one of the Lexington High boys, the school that was just a town or two away from Paris, New York. It was a lot more sophisticated than Notre Dame High, or so I'd heard, but all in all, it was a normal school, just like ours.

Another tall boy, this one with skin that wasn't a burning red color, ran up to Donovan, almost placing a hand on the large boy's shoulders but retracting his arm- a smart decision. "Come on, man," he spoke, his voice a dull murmur but easily heard over the wall of silence that was being built at the edges of the room. "We have to get you to a hospital." Donovan ignored him, taking a few more steps towards the cowering boy, who, by now, was backing up, turning to each side, a realization washing over him that there was nowhere to run. He was trapped- and I felt trapped, too, the edges of the air around me closing in, a sharp sensation burning my skin.

"Fight, fight, fight!" Adrianna screamed, various heads turning towards her, malicious smiles appearing on faces all around us.

For a girl who didn't know what was going on, she surely did want some action to occur. "You're drunk." It was a miracle that I could even speak those words.

She turned to me. "You're just catching onto that now?"

My gaze was latched back onto Donovan, whose lips had curled upwards into a smile, the glass in his arm starting to absorb the blood that trickled down the edge of his arm. It was a miracle that he wasn't screaming in pain by now, cringes gracing his facial expression every few moments. "She's right, you know," he spoke, his syllables oozing out of his mouth like sour molasses, and I felt my stomach start to knot up, throbbing in pain, as though someone had punched me in the gut. "A fight _does_ seem like a good idea." His voice was cracking, becoming lower, as if the letters were coming from somewhere underwater and rising up to the surface for air._ Oh, fuck, Adrianna, look what you did!_

By then, my gaze had shifted to the cowering boy, shaking, legs twisting and vibrating in absolute fear. I felt my heart turn to ice, dropping into my stomach, which was already knotted and coated in rock-hard steel. His hands were covering his face, hood pulled over himself, as if to shield his looks from the world, as if not being able to see the boy who was screaming at him would diminish the fear that had taken over his emotions. I watched his limbs shake, his chest push out and pull in, an indication of his heaving breaths and his pulsing heartbeat. My lips quivered, and I was completely unaware of the thin layer of tears that had coated my eyes. He was trembling, the poor thing.

A drop of blood oozed out of the cut across his arm, and my heart gave a sickening pound. I hadn't done a good job of cleaning it, had I?

I tugged on Jamie's shoulder, gaining her attention. "C-come on, guys, we have to go." My voice was barely a whisper, syllables leaving my mouth slowly, cracking and twisting in strange ways.

Adrianna gave me a light shove in the arm, causing me to fall back down onto my heels, feet slamming down onto the warm floor. "What do you _mean_?" She was smiling, edges of her eyes watering, swaying rapidly on her heels. I was going to kill her tomorrow morning. "I want to watch this-"

"_No_." My voice was stern, crackling, like icicles being broken by a pair of rough hands. "We have to get out of here right now." I thought that I was going to cry, my voice breaking through the icy layer of saliva that had coated my throat.

I turned to leave, slowly making my way around the circle of bodies, my shoes practically falling apart, feet trembling and bones vibrating. I could barely walk, my legs pulsing with a strange, dull energy, hands shaking to the point where it felt as though they were going to fall off. Even here, when there was nothing but the sound of my broken shoes slapping against the concrete floor and the heavy breathing of the boy whose skin was turning red with anger, I could feel the thick, dense emotion hanging in the air. I felt the trembling boy's breaths against my neck, as if he were right beside me, as if he were breathing on top of me. I could feel his hands shaking against my arms, almost like he had grabbed onto me, was holding me for comfort and balance. I reached out a finger, my walking slowing down, and I could feel the empty, rough scar that had been crafted over the palm of his hand, could make out where the blood was flowing from and how far down his arm it had dripped. My heart stopped, and my chest became totally frozen. I was alone, yet he was right next to me, a boy who I'd never formally met before.

I almost didn't notice the sound of the shuffling feet tearing apart the silence which had encased me, almost didn't see the crowd begin to part out of the corner of my eye, the sound of heels slapping obnoxiously against the concrete flooring.

"What's going on here?" My legs froze, my muscles rusting and becoming glued into place as the fizzy, bubbly voice of the queen bee burst itself into the room. Monica DeGiorno's voice is never really a good sign, as I'd learned from experience. It signifies danger, unnecessary drama, the flashing of a red light, blinking on and off, velvety red colors dotting wherever you looked.

"_Monica_," Donovan spoke, his voice toned down and humbled, as if he were speaking to a queen instead of a lowly peasant. I was surprised how far his tone had dropped, from rough and unpleasantly sharp to a somewhat low and tickling. "Monica, look at what-"

"And _this_ is the boy who did it?" Her voice, I'd come to realize, was like soda, thin and sugary, bubbles forming and fizzing out of the top. However, like all sodas, there was something dangerous behind it, something that would rot your teeth and cause you diabetes and all kinds of unnecessary illnesses. That underlying substance was like poison, hiding behind the sugary and fizzing layer until right time to attack. That was what her voice was- soda. Sweet and fizzy, until you broke apart the layers and searched deeper.

"Monica." The room was silent for a moment, a few gasps and mutters dotting the crowd. This voice was a new one, one that I didn't expect, a voice that bounced off of the walls and filled the whole basement like light would fill a room. That was what her voice was, in fact- it sounded the way light would sound, glowing and perfectly rich, a low kind of silkiness, coming from darkness and crashing forth into brightness. She sounded like royalty, like a queen gazing upon her people, but not in a stubborn, obnoxious kind of way- more like a humbled kind of royal, one who led the citizens with determination and leadership. In this moment, her voice was soft, gentle, a light breeze sweeping across the room- maybe even pleading. "Monica, it was probably an accident-"

"_Esmeralda_," Monica sighed, as if she were encountering a bug which had been buzzing around her head and annoying her for the last half hour. My chest began to burn and fizz, and a piece of my head began to pulse and pound in confusion. Her voice was stern, sharp and crackling, hints of her poison core showing through, but at the same time, hesitant and cautious, as if she were a wall, desperately trying to keep something from passing through and stumbling blindly into the next layer.

"_Remember_ what-"

"_No_." Monica cut the girl off, her tone of voice raising sharply, desperation dripping through that sugary layer. "_Just_-" I stood motionless, palms curling into fists and then unfurling once more, waiting for whatever stutter would escape the lips of the queen bee next. "Just no." There were a few seconds of silence, thin and distant, and then yet another round of heel-clacking, the slaps on the ground starting to become sickening, a vile taste erupting at the bottom of my stomach, my legs frozen solid. A cough, a clearing of someone's throat. "Give him what he-"

"_No_!" Esmeralda cried out, pleading instead of protesting, the light in her voice flickering and becoming blinding for merely an instant, and then becoming cut off, shut down, cord unplugged. "Monica, listen, you were-"

"And _you_ stay out of this!" cried that soda-like voice, poison seeping through the sugary layer. She spoke sternly, as if she were a strict mother scolding a young child for doing something terribly rude. There was silence for a few moments, my palms beginning to raise to my ears, wanting to block out the next sentence that would escape Monica's lips.

"Give him what he deserves."

_Crrrrrrrack!_

At that very instant, I jumped, the hairs on my neck standing up as a warm, chilling feeling enveloped me. The crowd surrounding the dance floor began to cheer, various hoots and giggles escaping from the lips of the students, obviously amused at what had just happened. I didn't want to turn around, extremely fearful over what I may see, but I forced myself to, making my way back in between Adrianna and Jamie. Jamie had an awkward look on her face, a mixture of uncertainty and nervousness, cheekbones whitening and lips starting to crack with dryness. Adrianna, however, was walking in circles behind the crowd, her head tilting in various directions, hooting and cheering without any true understanding of what had happened. I tried my best to ignore her drunk cries, wondering what the consequences would be if I strangled her right then and there, and positioned myself in between the two of them, standing on my tiptoes, unsure of what I would see.

The crowd had parted, leaving a thin line in between them that led up to the stage at the back of the room, some people at the back of the ring starting to leave and walk across the dance floor, following whatever it was that had made itself through the path of students. I didn't see what it was that had happened until I sucked in my chest, letting my torso tighten and stretch out, extending my legs so that I could see over the dense patches of heads that had blocked most of my vision. Donovan, lips twisting this way and that due to emotions that I couldn't decipher, was marching through the empty pathway in between the crowd, eyes resting on the massive, dark wooded stage at the end of the room, a thin line of blood dripping down his arm and onto the floor. His hand, veins throbbing with what I could only assume to be pain, was firmly attached to the wrist of the trembling boy who had harmed him, half leading, half dragging him down the center of the crowd.

My heart gave a sickening throb, coating my organs in a vile tasting layer of pain, and I squinted, further examining the situation through the dull lights, which, by now, were causing my head to spin and the back of my brain to pound. Donovan looked almighty, as if someone had placed a crown on his head and declared him king of everything, while the trembling boy looked like an innocent being led to his death, wrist firm beneath Donovan's grasp but other features practically vibrating. His thin legs shook like uneven tree branches swaying in a windstorm, and I expected them to snap beneath the weight of his strongly built torso and arms (whether this was from fat or muscle, I didn't know, due to the baggy, gray sweatshirt covering everything up).

The pair reached the far end of the stage, the entire crowd of students having followed behind like a hungry pack of wolves following their prey, Donovan pulling the boy up the steps that had been carved into the thick wood, practically dragging him towards the middle of the vast, wooded area- center stage. At Notre Dame High, that exact spot would have been marked with a piece of bright orange duct tape, marking the exact point where each soloist would have stood as they sang to a vast audience of one thousand people. In the DeGiorno mansion, there was no duct tape, no performances, and definitely, no singing. Nothing beautiful could happen here, and I was sure of it. Only sick humiliations, disgusting parties, and whatever Donovan was going to do to that poor, trembling boy upon the stage.

The boy sat on his knees, his legs giving out and just collapsing underneath him, those branch-like legs finally snapping, hitting the wood with a loud '_thump_'. I cringed, wondering how badly his knees would have stung from a fall like that. The vile taste in my stomach grew, crawling up my insides and beginning to pool at the bottom of my lungs, diminishing my ability to breathe. On instinct, I put a hand to my neck, worried that my throat was closing up.

The blood on Donovan's arm was coming out in bubbles and clumps now, flowing down his arm and coating nearly half of his arm in a waterfall of deep red paint. Even through his pain, he grinned, biting the ends of his lips, trying to hold back what I could only assume was laughter. The crowd had gathered at the very edge of the stage, looking up with excitement and glee, a dense air of drunkenness pooling around them. I, on the other hand, had stayed at the end of the room, walking forward mere inches at a time, my legs becoming numb and distant, like they'd been stolen from me by ghosts and strange emotions. I didn't know if Adrianna and Jamie had joined the crowd or not, and frankly, I didn't care. I didn't have space in my head to think about them.

Donovan's next action surprised me. With a quick sweep of his arm, he grabbed the hood of the boy's baggy sweatshirt, letting the fabric press against his fingers for a moment, and watched as the boy reached up, trying to pull the bloody hand off of his clothing. I watched, curious, as Donovan fought back, chuckling and laughing as the trembling boy let out a mortified gasp. My chest burned, charring the ends of my heart and nibbling at the ends of my heartstrings.

Effortlessly, Donovan pulled the hood away, ripping the sweatshirt off with just a pull of his hand, kicking the boy towards the end of the stage. The stage lights came on.

I didn't know if I screamed, any noise that I made being drowned into the collective yelling and gasping that the crowd around me was making, shocked, confused, drunk, and most of all, entertained. I put a hand to my mouth on instinct, my eyes tracing his facial features, flames rising up in the back of my chest.

He was deformed, that much was obvious, a large hump protruding out of the right side of his upper back, like a large rock covered by a few layers of skin. But the real deformity lay in his face, the first thing my eye caught on to. There was a huge wart that hung into his left eye, which, I can only assume, hurt his vision terribly. His nose was extremely large, and resembled the nose of a pig, being pushed back into his face, a few layers of skin piling up behind it. His mouth was somewhat shaped like a horseshoe, like a crescent moon, and behind his thin lips lay a set of terribly crooked teeth, each tooth twisting an entirely different way than the others. His hair was a bright red color, the color of fire itself, rather messy, separate strings of hair falling this way and that, occasionally falling into his eyes. I almost didn't notice his eyes, a deep, emerald green color, darting across the room, from face to drunken face, irises seeming to tremble as his mouth hung open, forming a twisted kind of frown, one that pleaded for help, assistance from anywhere it could be found.

With an awkward groan of embarrassment, he covered his face with his hands, large and meaty, and stayed there for a few moments, entire figure practically vibrating with pain, with humiliation.

From behind me, I heard a deep, baritone-like voice gasp in surprise. "Quasimodo," it choked, as if speaking the name of a revolting species of animal. My heartbeat froze. Claude Frollo.

There was silence for a few moments, an absence of sound, although I felt like the entire world was screaming in those few seconds. I felt everything, and yet, there was nothing.

As soon as I'd assumed that the crowd was going to do nothing besides stand there and chuckle at his distorted image, there was a loud scream, consisting words that I couldn't possibly decipher, and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw an empty beer bottle fly out and hit the boy in the side of the head.

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><p><strong>If anyone caught onto it, the stage is a symbol.<strong>

**I am actually extremely sorry for the long wait, but school break is here, and it ends on Monday. Hopefully I can get chapter four finished and put up by then, but it's going to take awhile, since there's a lot of emotion in that chapter (humiliation officially starts)**

**And for those of you wondering where the hell this Donovan character came from, keep an eye out. He's going to become relevant in the future.**

**I love you all, don't forget to review! :)**

**~Leslo**


	4. Broken Glass

**Instead of starting off with apologies because this freaKING CHAPTER TOOK MORE THAN A MONTH TO WRITE, I'm starting off with celebrations.**

**First of all, my musical (Once Upon A Mattress) went amazingly well. I survived my solo (thank Jesus). The video is up on youtube under the username writegirl42, if anyone would like to watch it. My dad sent it to everyone he's ever met in his entire life ever, which was pretty embarrassing… I'm really happy with the way everything turned out.**

**Of course, the play took up so much of my time. Plus, I've been spending time studying for quarterlies and big tests (I survived most of my quarterly exams, which is also a celebration). But now that a lot of testing is over and the musical has come to an end, I have a lot of time to work out chapters. I'm getting back into my regular schedule: doing my homework as soon as I get home, writing as soon as I finish, taking quick breaks to go on instagram and twitter and tumblr, eating food… Basically spending my whole afternoons writing. So that is also a celebration.**

**My next celebration is, of course, you guys, my readers. I love every single one of you, and I thank you for your patience. I'm thinking of also putting this story up on wattpad, since there are a lot more people there and the Disney fandom is pretty active. My favorite Disney fanfic gets like 70 reviews per chapter. I really want to share this story with more people.**

**I'd like to thank my gorgeously gorgeous reviewers:**

**TheBeautifulDreamer (You're perfect okay)**

**Lady of Myth and Legends (TLWU is the Beyonce of my favorite fanfic list and by that logic you are the queen)**

**ANYTHINGGOES31 (You're so cute and sweet)**

**xxxMadameMysteryxxx (Aw, you're really kind)**

**Lone-Soprano-of-Sopranoland (You're extremely nice, I love your username)**

**iWrite (Aww, I'm honored to be your favorite story! ILY)**

**SpiritHunter121 (Your review was literally me after reading any fanfic ever. Like, wtf do I do with my life)**

**Cp (I have no intention of abandoning this story. It's gonna take a really long time, but I want to finish it. ILY)**

**I would hug all of you if I could. But I can't.**

**Here's chapter four, and please, don't forget to review when you're done! It only takes a minute.**

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><p><strong>Chapter Four: Broken Glass<strong>

When I found Harper with Gabrielle Kramer, emitting slurred giggles from the cracks in between his teeth and biting his lips through a cheeky smile, it took me a few moments to fully process what was going on. After those moments had passed, elongated and fuzzy, like time itself had froze for a moment, patiently waiting for my brain to register what had occurred, I felt something unpleasantly familiar- the feeling of a heart string snapping. It's an awkward feeling, when you really break it down and think about it, and it's extremely difficult to explain. It's almost like a pinch, like the swift chop of a blade through a vegetable, like the snapping of scissors across a thin piece of rope. That's what you feel, a snapping, cracking sensation, the feeling locked away and buried deep inside your chest. But that's not the real pain- the real pain is a few moments after, when your heart starts to deform due to the split heart string, when your eyes open and the cloudy blindness vanishes, when your brain has taken in all that has happened. That's when you start to feel real pain.

It was funny, really, that as I watched the bottle fly over the heads of the crowd and bang against the boy's head, I felt those same emotions. A snapping sensation, pushed down somewhere inside of my chest, and then, a realization. And the most sudden realizations usually come in the form of pain, a seemingly unbearable ache.

I watched, my eyes tracing the crinkles that had built up at the corners of the emerald green discs that graced his face, squinting, as if to block out the blinding light, turned on suddenly, like a slap to the face. His hands trembled restlessly, the glass bottle haven bounced off of his skull and fallen onto the floor with a sickening '_ching_'. It wasn't even a bounce- it was a pause, as though time had froze when the glass came in contact with his face, the bottle suspended in air for a second or two before lowering itself onto the stage, the edges of the bottle chipping beneath the hard texture.

People were shouting, yelling out drunken, indecipherable cries that indicated being entertained, a buzzing sound starting to trigger in the back of my head. All their shouts mixed together, pressing against each other, as though their cries had been painted across the ceiling, different colors and brush strokes being suspended in thin air and then blending into each other, pinks and greens and blues and blacks and yellows twisting into each other like strands of hair on a braid, creating a sickening shade of brownish-gray. I couldn't think, and after a moment or two, I couldn't breathe, the revolting color wafting around in the air and starting to coat my lungs.

There was another drunken cry, this one colored a horribly deep shade of red, the color of blood that seeped out of the edges of a scar. Another bottle flew out from the left side of the crowd, this one half-broken, the entire bottom half chopped off, leaving nothing but unsettlingly sharp edges that caught the stage lights easily and glinted as they were launched to the poor boy's face. Instead of hitting his cheek, the broken bottle hit his bare back, the smooth side colliding with the hump on his back.

Even before his back and the empty bottle collided, he cringed in pain, his eyes shutting, the light in his emerald irises becoming covered quickly, like the light of a candle being hidden behind a closed door. All his facial features became pushed in a different direction, eyes closing in on themselves, nose becoming even more scrunched up into his face, teeth gritted with an air of sharpness and lips folding outwards awkwardly. I didn't even notice that my legs were trembling beneath my body weight, which now seemed practically overwhelming, feet becoming numb, as though they were sinking into the concrete floor.

The third and fourth bottles flew out and hit the boy in unison, the soprano and alto sections of a chilling duet, one smacking him in the face, pushing against his scrunched up nose, the other pinning him plain in the chest, which was bare and bright, seeming to catch the light and reflect it off of itself, but that was the last thing that I could think of at the moment. The once white spot in the center of his chest began to redden immediately, a sickening shade of magenta. Even an idiot would understand that that indicated a serious impact, a rough collision.

And that's when the insanity began, life starting to explode like time bombs in each corner of the room.

One bottle flew out of the crowd, this one with chipped edges, then two, and then three, then many all at once, colliding with the boy, slapping against his bare body sickeningly, every bottle earning a new chorus of cries from the crowd of students. The boy could barely open his eyes, hiding the light in his irises away from the crowd, from the world, blocking his face with his meaty hands defensively, as if that could get the crowd to cease their torment. But they continued without any thought, pelting broken bottles of all sizes mercilessly, each bottle colliding with his body and drawing their mark across his skin, whether it be a deep patch of magenta or a long, purple cut that looked carefully crafted, gracing his skin and causing his teeth to press into each other.

Bottles and shards of broken glass bombarded him, knocking him in all directions, shoving him across the stage, pulling him back down each time that he tried to get up, legs beginning to straighten as he pushed himself onto his feet and regained the slightest hint of balance. The smallest bottle, crafted from dense, warm glass, flew out and smacked into his legs, causing them to wobble under the unexpected pressure, his body weight now unsupported as he fell back down, the hump on his back the first thing to collide with the stage. I watched his teeth grit in pain, his irises drip with a sort of helplessness, patches of violet and deep blue beginning to dot his skin.

His head turned this way and that, vibrant red hair swaying and rearranging itself with each new expression, his sight desperately trying to grab onto any sort of route of escape. His legs wobbled beneath him, like thin rubber bands being pulled back and let go of again, making it nearly impossible for him to make his way to the staircase that lay just feet before him. Even if he could stand, he wouldn't be able to leave the room- the entire stairwell was blocked, students lining up and creating a tightly packed wall, climbing over each other to get closer to the stage, hoping that their next throw would be the one to knock the hunchback out, leaving him unconscious against the cold of the stage.

To say that I couldn't breathe would be a serious understatement. I was suffocating into myself, the edges of my throat almost melting down into my lungs and clogging up my insides. The oxygen had been stolen from the air, a nagging cloudiness building up at the back of my head as I watched, legs disappearing from underneath me. Each fiber of my skin seemed to shake, my blood frozen and numb inside my veins, my brain turning into a thick paste within my skull. I couldn't think, I couldn't move- all I could do was watch, letting my fingers wrap around the chilling hunk of metal in the pocket of my pants- my phone.

I wanted to rip out my phone and call the police. I wanted to run on stage and, with a wave of my hand, get the torture to stop altogether. I wanted the shards and bottles that lay scattered across the stage to disappear, the cuts and multicolored bruises across the boy's skin to vanish without any sort of trace. But above all, I wanted to do something, no matter how much logic it lacked. I had to do something. I couldn't just stand there and remain motionless, useless and practically invisible.

In every anti-bullying assembly that we'd had in middle school, the message being conveyed through a documentary or a cheesy musical or a long, brain-dulling speech, it was repeatedly explained to us that standing there and watching the action was essentially just as bad as causing the bullying yourself. But in a way, I felt worse than that, as though the reason for this entire torturous occurrence was in my hands, sitting right on my shoulders, pushing me down and cracking at the core of my bones.

The problem was, this wasn't bullying. No anti-bullying musical or sob-story YouTube video or disheartening speech could address anything of this sort. No, this wasn't bullying. This was worse. This was inhumane torture. This could kill somebody. This was murder in the process of happening.

"_Master_!"

A muffled cry escaped from the edges of the boy's lips, a few letters drowned out by the roaring of the crowd- but I heard it. It was like what I saw when I took my glasses off- a blurred world, everything fuzzy and distorted, though I could still see things. That was what the word was, misshapen and blurred, but still there, still strong. I began to wake up, the clock in my head rewinding as my brain turned back into a solid object.

"Master, _please_!" he cried, arms reaching out, gaze shifting just to the right of me as he was bombarded with a few more glasses. "_Help_ me!" He was desperate, the ends of his hair turning a deep brown with sweat, the cuts across his body glowing and bleeding, each individual bruise throbbing as if it had its own heartbeat. Once again, a black bottle flew out and knocked him in the chest, his eyes widening as he doubled over in pain, the wind knocked out of him as he opened his mouth and began to wheeze continuously. A moistness grew at the corners of his eyes, thick, dotting across his eyelashes.

Tears.

I started to move, my toes feeling as though they were being pulled on by heavy weights, but I moved anyway, my heartbeat ringing with a new air of determination, sparks igniting around the outline of my heart- and then I stopped.

Before we go any further, let's take a look at myself. It'll be a rather short look, but a look nonetheless- I'm around five foot eight or nine, somewhere in that range, rather tall for my age, and I weigh a little under one hundred pounds. As you could probably tell, I'm skinny- very skinny, to the point where it's pretty much unhealthy. I can't run up a single flight of stairs, no matter how short, without getting winded and having my lungs cave into each other. I can't throw a good punch for my life, and if I could, it wouldn't be able to defend me very well, only succeeding in dislocating my fingers. I have almost no body fat- a fact that may seem enviable when read on paper, but when seen with the human eye, it comes out to be a rather disgusting image. My skin is paper-thin, conforming to my bones in an awkward way, the veins in my hands pushing out against my knuckles, my hips and shoulders jutting out at terribly weird angles.

When I had just turned thirteen, I barely ate anything, considering that I honestly wasn't hungry at any point throughout most of the week, and was just on the brink of becoming an anorexic. Luckily, I was able to start eating a little more, my parents pressuring me into shoveling food down the back of my throat. The lingering disease had fled long ago, but my body type never did.

And to top that all off, I'm not attractive, nothing about my body or face shape seeming pretty or envied. My nose pushes out of my face in a strange way, obnoxious, yet able to support my glasses fairly well; my lips are plump and fat, colorless and sort of just there; each blank corner or crevice in my face containing tiny, discolored pimples and blemishes, annoying blobs of red that dot themselves across my cheeks, forehead, and especially my chin. My body isn't as curvy as other girls'- my breasts are as flat and tiny as those miniature sized pancakes that they give you at diners, my ass tiny and seemingly nonexistent, not a single curve or dip located anywhere across my body. My arms are like toothpicks, bones jutting out of their sides; my ribs barely able to be seen when I breathe in or out. I'm shaped like a rectangle, like a box, whereas other girls are rounded out- rounded boobs, rounded ass, rounded shoulders- they're round, and I am not.

Obviously, I'm not intimidating or strong in any sort of way, let alone able to get a crowd to stop any kind of torment. Nor am I as curvy and as less-rectangular as other girls, a sight to turn from rather than a sight to gaze upon. What was I supposed to do? I couldn't stop these drunken teens. Nobody could. If I ran on stage with him, I'd get killed, and that isn't an exaggeration. I wouldn't exaggerate about anything as serious as that. There was nothing I could do- and if there was, I would have done it already.

Watching this boy get tortured on the stage, watching his bones crack and his muscles burn beneath the weight of the bottles- it seemed more torturous on my part than his. Pain etched through my bones, circulating throughout the narrow edges of my veins. Guilt had slowly become born in the deep corners of my stomach, and was expanding, snaking its way up my gut and around my organs. It devoured any kind of positive twinge of thought, constricting around my throat and depleting any possibility of breathing normally. It hollowed out the light that had been dotted across my heart, carving through my chest and making a new home in my lungs. I couldn't breathe. I didn't want to breathe. If I tried to breathe, I would just be breathing in guilt- smoky, vile-tasting guilt.

I ran. But I didn't run towards him, or anywhere in his direction- I ran the other way. I ran towards the staircase, my throbbing heartbeat and my closed up throat begging to be let out.

"_Leslie_!" I heard Adrianna call after me, her throat dry and letters twisting and cracking, each syllable pressed and slurred in a different way. I didn't show any sign of answering, and after a few moments, I came to the conclusion that she wasn't going to follow me out. She seemed to drunk to even walk, at this point of the night.

I continued to run, keeping my head down and letting the wateriness of my eyelids worsen, the ground becoming fuzzier and horribly blurred beneath the moistness of my irises. I felt faint, extremely faint, the smell of alcohol and sweat mixing together, creating a vile aroma that clogged up my throat and caused the back of my head to spin drastically. I almost didn't notice the girl standing right in front of me, vibrant green eyes fixed upon the torment which was happening. With a clonking "_smack_", our skulls collided, and I was knocked back a few inches, my stomach churning as I regained my balance, daring to allow my pounding head to tilt upwards.

Standing in front of me, a girl stood, just an inch or so shorter than I was. She had thick, deep brown waves that flooded out from the crest of her head, enveloping the back of her head and shoulders in what seemed like a fluffy, dark storm cloud, the strands at the ends curling and intertwining with each other. I could barely make out the color of her skin under the layer of electrified, red dots that graced her arms and shoulders. A bright copper color, rich and silky, like the tone of honey mixed with melted chocolate- deep and smooth, a sensation that lingered around at the back of your throat even after you swallowed. Her eyes were green, the brightest shade that I'd ever come to face with, like emerald lights that had been hidden beneath the layers in her irises, like two green, glassy moons that had been forced onto her face.

She rubbed the side of her head in pain, using her free hand to smooth out the heavy wrinkles at the edges of her deep, purple cocktail dress- somewhat like Monica's, but a little less form-fitting. Silver bangles and bracelets decorated her arms, large hoops hanging from her ears.

A small gasp escaped my throat, and in that breath of air, I could feel a heavy layer of guilt swirling through the corners of my mouth, dense, my tongue struggling underneath its weight. It took me a moment or so to find the ability to speak once more, my ears so enveloped in the drunken screams that were making themselves comfortable in the air around me.

"I-I'm _sorry_, I-" I would have finished my sentence, if my gaze hadn't fallen upon Claude Frollo, the man who stood just a few feet away from the familiar girl. From this short distance, I could make out each individual feature that graced his thin face, my eyes boring into each tiny wrinkle and crevice that had been so carefully formed into his skin. I'd never seen the politician from this close, always examining him from another hallway or intersection when he visited Notre Dame High. Even now, I had a hard time looking at him, smacking his nearly-invisible lips distastefully, brows furrowed and gaze set on the torture which was happening before him, eyes sharp and narrow, as if he had filed his irises with a knife before he'd appeared before me.

My eyes shifted back to the girl again, who was shaking her head and waving her hand at me, as if dismissing me like I were an unimportant or embarrassing subject that she wanted anything but to talk about. "It's alright." I felt my stomach twinge, the guilt that had settled in my chest starting to dwindle and become replaced by something else, another emotion that I couldn't put my finger on. Confusion, maybe? I recognized her voice immediately, of course, as the girl whom Monica had brushed by when ordering Donovan to "_give him what he deserves_" (a phrase which I hadn't understood fully at first, but now, knew what it meant, more of what it meant than I'd wanted to). Esmeralda, I believe her name was. Esmeralda Tierney- yes, that was it.

Although I'd taken up such a large corner of my mind thinking about her, she seemed to all but acknowledge me, turning to the side and letting her gaze sharpen, eyes falling upon the man who stood just feet away from her. "Aren't you going to _do_ anything!?" I jumped at the volume of her voice, so harsh and sharp, like a ruler cracking against the edge of a desk, an old method that teachers would use to get the class to settle down.

Claude Frollo turned, eyes falling upon the emerald gems that decorated Esmeralda's face, his expression bored and stern, like it had been carved into stone. "I told the boy not to come anywhere _near_ this place," he spoke, his tone so strict and orderly that you would think that he was the ultimate ruler of this town, each and every person in this room his servant. I felt the hairs on my neck standing up as if a wave of cold wind had swept onto them. "And yet, he _did_." He pressed his lips together, the wrinkles around his mouth straightening out as if they'd been ironed. If darkness had a voice, this is what it would sound like, so deep and booming, engulfing the whole room in a deep cloud. "And, as such, he deserves his punishment."

His eyes darted back to the torture which was happening on the stage. Amidst the drunken screams of the crowd and the pleas of the poor boy, I could hear the politician mutter, "Far be it from that DeGiorno girl to thrust an empty bottle of Jack Daniels into his arms."

Esmeralda seemed like a time bomb, the edges of her forehead taking on a dull, red glow- or was that from the multicolored lights?- the color of her eyes developing a brighter shade of green, turning into flashlights rather than gems. Her lips were pressed together firmly, as if it were a barrier between the words that she was thinking of saying and the words that were acceptable to say to Claude Frollo.

The barrier broke, her lips parting for just a moment, words flooding out of the rather small space. "Just because you're here to do business with her parents doesn't mean-" She stopped, letting the trap doors that were her lips slam shut. She had a bomb stored somewhere inside her, and the seconds were ticking away. I began to back up, fearful of what may happen if I had gotten in the way of the explosion. "Oh, why, you- _you_-"

And just as quickly as I'd run into her, she was off, turning into a blur of violet and bronze, disappearing into the crowd of rowdy teenagers. I blinked, letting my eyes moisten once more, shaking my head. She had come and gone so quickly, and yet, the way she had spoken to Frollo had left me dazed and confused. Had she really been there, or was she just a mirage that my mind had created due to my overwhelming exhaustion and numbness?

With no one else to look at, Frollo's gaze turned back to the violence that unfolded before him, the traces of a smile pulling at the corners of his lips. My heart gave a sickening jolt as his teeth, yellowing and cracking at the ends, bit the ends of his lips, forcing them from curving into a grin, attempting to block out his emotions from the rest of the world- emotions that I couldn't read. However, even an idiot could tell that his expression held no negativity, no pity or sorrow over the harming of the deformed boy. Instead, it dripped with a sort of pride, a success, something that told me that he'd been waiting a long time to witness an event like this. Whether it was due to a desire for revenge or something else, I would probably never know- all I knew is that he was smiling, a sense of victory showing at the edges of his irises.

Never had I ever been that close to Claude Frollo. I would normally gaze towards him from across a hallway, watching as he adjusted the collar of his suit and spoke with Principal Deacon, lips moving so fast and furiously that I didn't have any time to attempt to make out what he was saying. Now, I was just steps away from him, my eyes able to make out each wrinkle and crevice that dotted his face, and needless to say, I didn't enjoy it. Just the remembrance of how much power this man had was causing my chest to coil and knot up. I'd always been uneasy at the thought of Frollo, and being just feet from him made me feel as though I was seeing him in a whole new light.

Immediately, I began to move, my toes regaining more of their feeling, my ears pounding viciously as the crowd cried, refusing to cease their torment. By now, they were throwing anything on the floor that they could find- missing sneakers, plastic containers, pieces of missing jewelry- anything. My head asked for permission to spin around and watch more of what was happening, to see what the torture had progressed to- but I refused. I lifted up my bony hands and dug my nails into the side of my skull, hoping that that would get myself to resist spinning around. Maybe not watching the event would reduce the overwhelming cloud of guilt that had remained in the thin tubes of my throat.

Something on the floor hit the lights and glimmered, pulling my line of vision back to the concrete ground. I bent down, letting my fingers brush against the cold floor, hooking onto something cool and smooth and lifting it up so that I could get a better glimpse at it. A thin, silvery bangle hung from the edge of my thumb, a rather admirable design of flowers and thorns etched into the material. I let my other fingers wrap around the bracelet, keeping it pressed as close to my palm as possible.

"_Sir_!"

A wave of chilling air swept across my skin, freezing me and leaving me suspended in time. Out of the corner of my eyes, I could see a sweaty blonde boy run up to the politician, the ends of his stringy locks of gold beginning to turn a deep shade of brown, beads of sweat glinting at the edges of his forehead. My jaw locked into position, teeth pressing against each other and eliminating any possibility of air getting through. No matter how desperate and out of breath his tone of voice may have sounded, it didn't lighten my anger towards him one bit.

"_Please_, sir," Phoebus panted, dewdrops of sweat catching the light, dotted across the line of his masterfully crafted jaw, "I request permission to stop this cruelty." His hands fell to his sides, the veins that decorated his dark irises quivering and pulsing, yet, in some miraculous way, he was still keeping his eyes locked on Frollo.

I was struck by an intense jolt of confusion, my teeth biting on the moist inside of my mouth at the unexpected shock. _Stop_ this cruelty? Was he saying that it had been in his power to cease the torment all along- all he had to ask for was Frollo's approval? The very essence of that thought was all that it took to make the tears at the corners of my eyes evaporate into the thick air, the nerves that were dotted across my body beginning to twitch and jump as they were set on fire by an invisible force. It was nearly impossible for someone to be able to control the nature of a cluster- no, a _mob_- of rowdy teenagers at two thirty in the morning on New Year's Eve- and yet, by the intensity in the tone of Phoebus's words, it seemed as though he knew that he had the ability to do such a thing!

However, Claude Frollo seemed all but willing to give Phoebus permission to "stop this cruelty", keeping his sharpened eyes set upon the stage, ears perked up as he listened to the horrendous laughter created by the crowd, not giving the golden-haired boy so much as a second glance. "In a _moment_, boy," the elderly man commanded, his voice orderly despite his ignorance towards the blonde boy. "A _lesson_ needs to be learned here."

What was more confusing than the fact that Phoebus was capable of stopping the torture was the fact that Frollo was the one whom he needed permission from.

There was little time in between Frollo's commanding words and Phoebus's reaction, his next sentence coming in quickly, almost bounding over Frollo's voice. "_Sir_," he responded- was that a plea that I could hear, covered up by all the layers and blank tones in his words, hints of the raw emotion sticking out at the edges of the syllable? "Sir, I'm afraid that we don't have a moment to spare." He'd crammed the emotion at the back of his throat, speaking tonelessly, as if he were the captain of an army of some sort, terrified of what he'd become if he showed the slightest hint of desperation in his language. "If you haven't _noticed_, sir, that's _broken_ glass-"

"I said a _moment_!" Even though the volume of Frollo's voice hadn't gone up, the tone intensified quite a bit, slapping across my nerves like a whip on the rear end of a horse and causing my bones to go cold. His voice was sharp and booming, like a mallet banging on the thick surface of a timpani, enough to make Phoebus's statue-like stance tremble.

Phoebus gulped, a lump of saliva traveling down the front of his throat. "Very well, sir," he replied, nodding subtly and turning away from him to gaze at the awful horror show which was taking place before them, a show which I couldn't dare to turn around and gaze upon.

The images of the red-haired boy being knocked over by multicolored glass containers had been branded into my eyelids, my stomach having been twisted into itself at the sight of the bruises that crawled up the hump on his back. And yet, it was difficult to believe that it was still happening, that whatever had scarred me and been etched into my eyes was continuing to occur, that the crowd had abandoned their bottles and had resorted to chucking shards of broken glass across the room and onto the well-lit stage-

I froze almost completely, my blood turning to dense snow and clogging up my veins, cutting off circulation in that small instant of realization. _Broken glass._

The two words acted as fuel, as invisible gas in replacement for the motivation to walk that had been stolen from me when I bumped into Esmeralda just moments ago, although it had seemed like hours, the dense sweat in the air having pulled apart the seconds and stretched them out into each other. My heels started to burn, and I moved, the balls of my feet touching the concrete for an instant before the next foot was placed onto the ground. I was zooming, cutting through the air that had been sitting down on me and pinning me in place, lifted away after two simple words began to bang around at the back of my head. Broken glass. Even now, while I was running, the word lingered around in my chest, starting to flutter its way into my throat. I didn't dare let it get to my mouth, due to the fact that it had already taken over enough of me, propelling me forward and pulling me up the stairs, through the door at the top of the staircase that separated hell from Earth.

Once I shut the door behind me, letting it slam and create a booming sensation that traveled through the cold floor, the first thing I could think of doing was dropping to my knees, which had already given way and were starting to cave into my thighs. But instead of letting my legs rest themselves alone, my entire body gave way, and I collapsed, feeling the cold sensation of polished tile against my hollow cheekbone. It stung, but not as much as the vile mist that had long since started to form at the back of my chest, pushing against my heart and causing it to squeeze under the pressure. I wanted to groan in pain, but I couldn't- I wouldn't.

The hollowness of my ear had been filled with blood, my eardrum pounding with a nagging sort of banging. I didn't know if the crowd had ceased their torture, the burning hot liquid in my ear blocking out any bit of sound- and I'm glad that I couldn't hear. Hearing would make everything so much worse.

Broken glass can murder somebody, can seep into their skin and infect their body and kill them- and it seemed so selfish, so unkind, so cruel of me that I was me and he was him. I was perfectly fine, not a scratch or a mark or a cut located anywhere on me, the only damage done to me being my snapped heart string and my bleeding eardrums, and the biggest downfall of my night was that I'd been cheated on.

But the thing that made me feel so guilty disgusted with myself was that I wasn't him, that I wasn't on the stage right now getting shards of broken glass thrown at me from all angles, that I wasn't getting killed by a mob of drunken teenagers, that every inch of my body wasn't pounding and surging with thick, intensified pain. Maybe if I were him and he were me, he wouldn't have to become tortured right in front of my eyes, he wouldn't have to be laying on a cold floor with tears in his eyes and pieces of glass stuck in his arms. If he were me, he wouldn't be in that sort of pain, pain that he didn't deserve.

A muffled sob escaped the corners of my lips, like a whimper from a puppy who had been abused horribly for the short period of time that it had been living. That was what I felt like- an abused puppy, a puppy who had been tortured just by watching another person become tortured. The blood in my ears was not the only liquid seeping out of me, a warm, moist sensation growing at the edges of my eyes, dotting my eyelashes and blurring my vision- or was that due to the dark spots that had been appearing across the air, the ones that were so unnatural and mystical, like they'd been conjured up by a sort of spell?

If we could only trade places- if he could trade places with anyone in the world- then he wouldn't be hurting. If he weren't him, he would be perfectly fine. And I absolutely hated every part of myself, not because I did nothing to help him, but because I wasn't the one getting tortured. I didn't feel worthy enough to be laying here without a single scar on my body. I didn't deserve to be here,

I had no pain in the slightest, and at the same time, I was hurting more than he was.

"I'm _sorry_," I choked, the words coming out as an emotional tide, lapping up against a shoreline, rather than real words. They were formed in warm tears, a wave-like emotion, rather than syllables and sharp letters. "This wasn't supposed to happen."

I didn't know this boy. I'd only touched him once, letting my hands trace a scar on his palm as I washed the blood off of it, spoken a mere few sentences to him and let my name ease out of the cracks between my lips at his request. _"What's your name?" "Leslie." _

And in that moment that I had met him, I didn't know about what he looked like, didn't know about the twists of excess skin that graced his face and the boulder-like piece of muscle located on his upper back. I cringed a bit, letting the image of this boy travel back into the focus of my memory. Even then, I didn't know if I'd screamed when I saw him, didn't remember if I'd let out any sort of sound, any cry of shock or of fear. Fear is temporary, as is pain, and the fear that I felt towards the boy's deformed body was, in fact, temporary, quickly replaced with the emotions that jutted into my stomach and chest when the first bottle was thrown at the stage.

Even though we'd only been in real contact for a simple minute or so, I felt like I had met him before, like our worlds had become crossed into each other before I'd even taken the chance and decided to let Phoebus bring me to Monica's party. And for that reason, I was hurting, more than any person who had witnessed the action, more than any person who had been in that room. I didn't want to think about how much I would be hurting if I'd actually known him, if I'd been able to hold a real conversation with him, if we'd shared memories together.

I held up my right arm, lifting the upper half of my body off of the floor and propelling myself onto my knees, allowing my eyes to flutter open for the slightest moment. The light that emitted from the chandelier began to sting the dry corners of my eyes, creating a rather uncomfortable sensation.

I lifted up a hand and used it to clean out my ears, getting thick drops of blood out of my head and onto the floor with a quick sweep of my fingers. The blood dotted the ground like paint that had dripped from an unfinished canvas, a work in progress which was going to become a masterpiece- which, in a sense, was me, except that I could never become a masterpiece. The thought of becoming something beautiful seemed to dramatic and cliche for me.

With the blood out of my pounding eardrums, I could hear once more- it may not have been perfect hearing, but I heard- and there was nothing. Silence, a deep abyss of absence, like a canvas that was expected to be covered in electric paints and contained not a single dot of pigments.

I gulped, my throat immediately running dry, the thick guilt having been sucked back up into my stomach. Did this indicate that the torture was over, or that it had just been ceased? Had it stopped for the moment, or for eternity? I didn't dare get up to have my questions answered, but they were still there, sitting at the back of my head and weighing me down.

It was then that I remembered the silver band that I'd picked up just moments before. My fingers had become less numb, my confusion triggering feeling in my limbs and bones. The silvery substance was cold against my palm, and I lifted up my hand, eager to get a better look at the piece of jewelry. It was definitely beautiful, with exquisite detailing carved into it, flowers and leaves and vines etched into all sides. My eyes caught onto a few words indented into the back, pressed into the thin band with such precision and mastery, you'd have assumed that it was created by a real professional.

"_Esmeralda Allora Tierney and Phoebus Jennings Chandler_", it read, the letters so small and so carefully wedged into the material that it was a miracle that I was able to read them.

"You! _Gypsy_!" The silence was shattered and crushed, the deep, darkening voice of a certain well-known politician climbing up the stairwell and bursting past the door that stood before me. "Get down from there at _once_!"

There are many gypsies in Notre Dame High, but there's only one of whom who I know was at the party- Miss Esmeralda Allora Tierney, whose silver bangle I had pressed against the palm of my hand right then.

* * *

><p><strong>Is that considered a cliffhanger? It doesn't seem too dramatic to be one. <strong>

**Ugh, long chapter is LONG once more- but I wanted to make it up to you guys by putting a lot of detail into this and cramming as many words as I can into one chapter. I spent all afternoon attacking my keyboard (my way of typing) to get this finished for you guys, and when I was ready to post it, the internet went out (yes, my internet shuts off at night. It's usually at 7, but last night it went off at 10). I was practically banging my head against the wall like "NO MY READERS CAN'T WAIT ANOTHER TWELVE HOURS FOR THIS CHAPTER WHAT IS LIFE".**

**Anyway, what did you all think of the chapter? I put so much detail into this one it's not even funny. It was supposed to be longer but then I took an arrow to the knee. Yes, I just made that reference in 2014.**

**What did you guys think of my choice for Esme and Phoebus's middle names? I don't know, I really like the name Allora, it sounds all mystical and stuff- and Jennings just sounds like the name of a jock. I tried.**

**PLEASE REVIEW PLEASE. It helps me understand what my readers want out of this story and what I can improve on and ayyyy.**

**I LOVE YOU ALL MWUAH**

**~Leslie/Leslo/Lezzers/Tlezzlers/Lezzer Canezzer/Leslay's Chips/Mrs. Quasi**


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